Retired Nomads: Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia – February 19

This is our 3^rd visit to Sydney. It is also the first time we aren’t doing an “over-land” off the ship. Previously, we have visited the Blue Mountains, Featherdale Wildlife Park, self-guided walk around The Rocks neighborhood, Sydney Opera House, did the Sydney Bridge Climb, Darling Harbour, ferry rides, Royal Botanical Garden, Bondi to Coogee Beach walk, flew to Ayers Rock and the Olgas and did The Sounds of Silence dinner at Ayers Rock. All awesome experiences.

This time I set up a private birding tour with Andrew Patrick. http://www.zestforbirds.com

Princess cut this port short as well and instead of arriving at 6:00, they moved it until 9:00 and then 9:30 and then 9:45. Then, our immigration appt was for 11:40. Not great for a birding tour, but it’s what we had to work with. Anyway, we went to the meeting place for immigration where we could disembark and go through immigration and we just went with the first group off the ship. (about 11:00)

The arrival into the harbor was the best we have had. It rained the first time and the second time we docked at the other wharf and while we got to sail under the bridge, it wasn’t great views of the Opera House. It had rained earlier today, but for the sail in it was sunny and we parked right by the bridge and the Opera House.

sail in

Silver Gulls

Andrew was waiting for us and we walked to where his car was parked, and we drove out of Sydney to find some birds! He really was patient to wait for us so long.

We drove to Centennial Park where we were searching for a Powerful Owl. We instantly saw a Laughing Kookaburra. The Owl wasn’t there, so we searched in another tree and sure enough there it was. (after seeing a couple of other birds like the Crested Pigeon)

Australian Raven

Laughing Kookaburra

Noisy Miner

Crested Pigeon

Powerful Owl

Magpie-lark

Tawny Frogmouth

Our day took us just outside of Sydney and we visited forests, woodland, wetlands, grasslands and urban parks.

Andrew

Greg & Andrew

Great Cormorant

Australian White Ibis

Australian Swamphen

Masked Lapwing

Australian Swamphen

Pied Cormorants nesting

Pacific Black Duck

Masked Lapwing

Pacific Black Duck

Magpie Lark

Darter with a fish

Darter swallowed the fish

young Darters

male Australasian Darter

Pied Cormorants

Black Swans

Black Duck & Coots

Pied Cormorants

Dusky Moorhen

Hardhead

Pacific Black Duck

Dusky Moorhen

Hardhead

Black Swan

Hardhead

Little Corella

Long-billed Corella

Little Corella

Noisy Miner

Fruit Bats

Australian White Ibis

young Gray Butcherbird

Pied Currawong

We saw over 50 species of birds today and many were new for us. (we had seen some of them on previous visits.) We saw lots of Laughing Kookaburras, Black Swans, Wood Ducks & Chestnut Teal, Superb Fairy-wrens, Cockatoo, Corella, Yellow Robin, Fruit Bats and Bowerbirds (including seeing their courtship area where the male works very hard to impress the female.) He stands between sticks he has placed there, and he collects blue things and puts them all around. I suppose the blue is normally flowers, but if they can’t be found anything blue will do. In this case it’s blue bottle caps. We saw many more birds as well.

He also told us about species we may see in our next 2 Australian ports. Andrew was very knowledgeable and easy going. We had a great day birding with him.

We stopped for a picnic style lunch that Andrew set up for us. It was cool and windy ,so it was a bit of a challenge not to have it all blow away. We had sandwiches, fruit & more.

Lunch was by the Hacking River

Uloola Track

cicada

Silver Gulls, Great Crested Tern, Caspian Tern

Scott Park Salt Marsh

Gray Duck

Chestnut Teal - females

Chestnut Teal - male

Pied Currawong

Maned Duck (Australian Woodduck)

Chestnut Teal - males

Chestnut Teal - male

Pacific Black Ducks

Pacific Black Duck

Little Pied Cormorant

Pacific Black Duck

Maned & Pacific Black Duck

Water Monitor

juvenile Bowerbird

Lewins Honeyeater

Green Catbird

Bowerbird - female

Bowerbird - male

Bowerbird - female

Eastern Yellow Robin

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

Satin Bowerbird courtship area

Satin Bowerbird courtship area - he places the sticks and stands between the sticks to court her

Riverine Park Wetlands - Pied Stilts

Pied Stilts

White-faced Heron

Black-fronted Dotterel

Black-fronted Dotterels

Black-fronted Dotterel

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike

Willie-wagtail

Superb Fairywren

Pied Stilt

Gray Teal

After Andrew dropped us off we went upstairs to have dinner and then went back out to have some Gelato. Yum! I had a chocolate dipped strawberry one that was amazing.

We made it back in time to catch the evening show which was the Cantorion Male Voice Choir. It was a mix of Australian, classical and folk choral and solo singing. There also was a soprano that sang a few songs. Really great performance by this local Sydney group.