Powerful Owls in Sydney Botanical Gardens, June 2012

Sydney’s Royal Botanical Gardens were bathed in sunshine for a very quick surgical strike in search of a pair of Powerful Owls. They proved to be very easy to find given that I had completely failed on two previous attempts.

Look for bat wings and possum tails scattered on the ground among the plentiful pellets, then just look up. Start your search in the ficus tree as the driveway splits, just before the Governor’s Mansion. Below is the male. The female preferred another ficus tree just across the driveway.

Mission accomplished, I moved on and took the long way back via the ponds where a Black Cormorant was roosting in the trees on one of the small islands. A black plastic sack stuck in one of the branches may have been another attempt by the gardens to save its trees.

In the past Australian Ibis and at least two species of cormorant nested on the little islands in the pond The ibis appear to have reduced significantly in number over the last few years and I have seen very little nesting behaviour on my recent visits.

I continued across the lawns towards the gap in the wall into the herb garden. Just here, another of Australia’s night birds, the Tawny Frogmouth was seen in a very open position.

Birds seen; 11

Maned Duck 4, Chestnut Teal 3, Little Black Cormorant 5, Australian Ibis 15, Dusky Moorhen 8, Masked Lapwing 4, Silver Gull 6, Powerful Owl 2, Tawny Frogmouth 1, Noisy Miner 5, Welcome Swallow 3.

For more posts from Sydney's Royal Botanical Gardens, follow the links below;
http://redgannet.blogspot.com/2009/05/cockatoos-at-dusk.html
http://redgannet.blogspot.com/2011/02/sydney-botanical-gardens.html

Visit the dedicated Australia page for more from the Sydney area including Bi-Centennial Park, North Heads and Royal National Park.

Sydney Botanical Gardens, Sydney, Australia, Jan 2012

From Singapore, our itinerary continued to Sydney, Australia. From our slip hotel, within the carry of the short boundary at SCG,  is the wonderful Sydney Botanical Gardens and it was a pleasure to be accompanied by my beautiful colleague MS. It was amusing to find someone who walks even slower than me and who is even more easily distracted than I am.

Fuelled by carrot cake and with a plan to find Tawny Frogmouths and Buff-banded Rail, we hoped to be back at the hotel within a couple of hours, but with two such unfocussed amblers, we were still there by mid-afternoon.

The resident Sulphur-crested Cockatoos flew down to the grass close by and gave us a good look, while the Masked Lapwing posed and showed off its wing spurs. I was surprised to learn that these spurs have a moulting process wherein the topmost layer of horny covering is dropped to reveal a similar, but shorter spur beneath.

The Grey-headed Flying Foxes are still in residence despite the best efforts of the rangers to move them along. The bats are protected and cannot be physically relocated, nor chased or scared away. The rangers' have deployed various methods to deter the bats from ruining valuable trees as they roost, but to no avail.

Garden Orb Spiders spun their huge webs across paths and between trees. Of all the toxic creatures that you might find in Australia, especially in the same backyard as the Redback and the Funnel-web Spiders, this horrific looking one is actually pretty innocuous.

A Buff-banded Rail darted out onto the path as we admired the spider, but was too quick for a photo. It appeared again further down the path, but still managed to elude the camera. The Tawny Frogmouths were nowhere to be seen. The ranger network had lost track of them over the last couple of months.

Noisy Miners were, as ever, noisy and abundant. Unlike the mynas, the miners are honeyeaters and feed at flowers using their brush-like tongues to collect nectar. Note that they are also important pollinators as you can see by the deposits on the head of this bird.

Beyond the shop and the cafe are the ornamental ponds which often contain large mullet and eels. Little Pied Cormorants, Little Black Cormorants and Australian White Ibis nested in the stunted palms of the small islands.

MS enjoyed a spectacular close encounter with a couple of Laughing Kookaburras which landed in a tree close to her and allowed the closest approach that I have ever experienced with a wild kingfisher.

A pair of Dusky Moorhens had built a nest on the plank of wood which was there to help small animals escape from the sheer-sided walls surrounding a small ornamental pond. If it had been subject to planning regulations, it would have been condemned, but the couple had managed to raise a chick in it and were lavishing their attention on it. One of them tried maintaining the nest by moving a few twigs around, but it was still a rubbish effort. It made for a very endearing family snapshot nevertheless.

As we eventually left the gardens, an Eastern Water Dragon posed for us in the palm area near the greenhouses.

Birds seen; 19

Little Black Cormorant 3, Little Pied Cormorant 6, Australian White Ibis 50, Australian Wood Duck 2, Chestnut Teal 1, Pacific Black Duck 10, Buff-banded Rail 2, Dusky Moorhen 15, Masked Lapwing 6, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo 5, Rainbow Lorikeet 3, Laughing Kookaburra 3, Welcome Swallow 30, Noisy Miner 50, Magpie Lark 1, Australian Magpie 2, Pied Currawong 2, Australian Raven 2, Common Myna 3.

For more posts from Sydney Botanical Gardens, follow the links below;
http://redgannet.blogspot.com/2009/05/cockatoos-at-dusk.html
http://redgannet.blogspot.com/2011/02/sydney-botanical-gardens.html

Visit the dedicated Australasian page for more posts from Sydney and Beyond, including; Bi-centennial Park, Royal National Park and North Heads.
Sydney Botanical Gardens, Sydney, Australia,

Sydney Botanical Gardens

Our arrival into Sydney, Australia was delayed by enough to disrupt my plans for the day. The temperature was already high with threats that it might reach 4OC. I postponed my trip to Waterfall and took an easy trip to the Botanical Gardens instead to look for Tawny Frogmouths and dragonflies.

In a tiny pool by the tropical glass houses, some Fiery Skimmers, Orthetrum villosovittatum, were chasing each other around. They were very approachable and allowed me to get closer than the macro focusing facility on my Nikon P100.

A Magpie Lark came down to a rock to bathe and get some relief from the heat which was really beginning to build now.

The Australian Emerald, Hemicordulia australiae, wouldn’t stop for a moment in its frenetic chasing, so it had to be taken in flight. This one was found over the little stream that feeds into the twin ponds. It occasionally hovered in a patch of sunlight between the deep shadows, which gave me somewhere to shelter from the sun as I watched and which set up this nice effect.

On the Main pond, above the mullet and the eels, a Common Glider, Tramea loewii, another restless ode, patrolled its area with diligence and vigour. I was not able to translate it into a digital code of zeros and ones. The damselflies here however were static enough for pictures as they sat on the floating weed. The Blue River Damsel, Pseudagrion microcephalum, is also known as a Blue Sprite in Asia. There is a P. australasiae which is almost identical in the male pattern, but which does not reach Australia I understand .If anyone can confirm this ode I would be grateful. Please note the blue bar across the back of the head which causes me some doubt.

In a conifer style tree a pair of Noisy Miners were making even more of a fuss than usual. A quick investigation, hoping to find an owl or perhaps a snake, revealed their brood of fledglings.

The Common Bluetail, Ischnura heterosticta, was a fourth outing for the red pen today. This is probably not surprising as I have not looked for odes in Australia before. If anyone would care to confirm these for me too, I would be grateful, particularly the lower ones.

I don’t have a field guide and am relying on internet surfing to find something to make a reasonable match, but without an exhaustive guide for comparison, it is difficult to be certain.

G.L. as usual had given me a couple of prompts. He had given me directions to find Tawny Frogmouths and Powerful Owl in the gardens. At one of his predictions for the frogmouth in a Swamp Mahogany tree by the wall, there was no sign of the bird, just an old piece of carpet. The Powerful Owl roost remains in potentia as I was not able to find anything there today.

Bird species; 14

Little Pied Cormorant 4, Australian White Ibis 14, Australian Wood Duck 1, Pacific Black Duck 8, Buff-banded Rail 1, Dusky Moorhen 15, Masked Lapwing 4, Silver Gull 8, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo 8, Rainbow Lorikeet 20, Tawny Frogmouth 1, Noisy Miner 15, Magpie Lark 1, Pied Butcherbird 1.

Odonata species; 5

Common Bluetail, Ischnura heterosticta 4, Blue River Damsel, Pseudagrion microcephalum, Common Glider, Tramea loewii 1, Australian Emerald, Hemicordulia australiae 12, Fiery Skimmers, Orthetrum villosovittatum 10.

Cockatoos at Dusk.

Late afternoon in Sydney Australia, it has been raining all day and my activities have been curtailed. I met up with a colleague, Sigi, who was keen to try out her camera on the Sydney wildlife and headed for the Botanical Gardens.

At the very heart of Sydney City, the gardens are a delightful place to aquaint oneself with the common local birds.We met two of the most obvious birds of the park before we even arrived at the gate. Rainbow Lorikeets are fantastically coloured birds and they provide spectacular scenes when a flock desends on the fruit at a feeder table. But their glory as a visual treat is spoiled by their assault on ones hearing. Their screeching calls are awful. The Noisy Myna by comparison is subdued, but still not tuneful. The Noisy Myna is a Honeyeater, not a starling as the name might suggest. Honeyeaters are one of the families of birds that exist only in the Australasian Zone.

And so into the park. As if the Rainbow Lorikeets were not enough, we almost immediately encountered a flock of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos. It has been said that surrounding property prices crash when a flock of these, otherwise beautiful, birds decide to form a roost, such is the raucous noise.

Next we came upon the bats. The Grey-headed Flying Fox colony has been a feature of the gardens for years.

Grey-headed Flying Fox from a previous visit

After trying everything that they could think of to gently encourage them to move on, the park has now accepted these protected animals and the colony is expected to break through 10,000 soon. Bats can also have a bearing on the desirability of a neighbourhood. In Gordon, a suburb of Sydney, there is a colony of 70-80,000 bats, all of whom seem to jettison their acidic fruity waste as they return to their communal roost after a night's feasting. Hence the popularity of carports in the area.

The light was leaving the sky quickly now as Sigrid took pictures of the bats and she was having to use her flash in the gloom. As we reached the small ornamental pond by the edge of the bay the light was almost gone, but a very approachable cockatoo was sitting on the rail of the bridge, so I tried my flash too.


Vey few birds were seen today, particularly missed was the Buff-banded Rail, which should have been very happy in the damp, gloomy conditions.