Archive for the 'Sydney' Category

Had a couple of helicopters buzzing around all morning.

Then late morning, the Channel 7 helicopter hovered out over Chatswood for quite a few minutes – I have no idea what it was doing there, but it was a bit annoying when I was trying to get some work done.

Channel 7 Helicopter - Chatswood

Some photos from my walk through Munro Park today:

Superb Fairy Wren (female)

As I was heading back along Flat Rock Creek, I came across a White Faced Heron wading through the water, obviously looking for fish. I took some photos and watched him for about 10 minutes as he wandered back and forth, checking out places where fish were likely to be lurking. Eventually he found something and darted around trying to corner the fish before he stood, perfectly still for close to 5 minutes (according to the timestamp on the photos I took!), before finally lunging and coming up with this big juicy looking fish.

White Faced Heron with fish

After watching it wriggling around for a bit, the Heron deftly flipped it into its beak and swallowed it whole. Was fascinating to watch the whole thing unfold.

White Faced Heron swallowing fish

Pacific Black Duck doing a little dance

Drove up to North Head this evening to see the sunset.

Sunset at North Head - Sydney

Sunset at North Head - Sydney

Long Nosed Bandicoot - North Head

Sydney from North Head at Sunset

This afternoon we headed down to Bondi for the South American Festival. We weren’t really sure what to expect, but we found a bunch of Latinos (and non-latinos who enjoy South American culture) enjoying live music, dance exhibitions, and some great food.

The dancing from a variety of different South American countries was fascinating, and the food was fantastic (have I mentioned how much I love empanadas?). We tried some interesting dishes and basically spent the afternoon wandering around between the exhibitions and grazing on the food from different stalls – I think we sampled something from almost every one of them.

There was also a Capoeira exhibition, which is a kind of part martial art / part dance / part game, with lots of acrobatics and lots of noise. Fascinating to watch.

South American Festival

Dancer costume

Capoeira exhibition

Capoeira exhibition

Went for a walk through Munro Park today, a few birds around (mostly the large family of Superb Fairy Wrens that I always see on this walk), but not much excitement really.

That was until I was heading back to the car, something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye – I looked up to see a large Tawny Frogmouth nestled on a tree branch, looking all fluffy and comfortable. I’ve always liked these birds – ever since we used to go “hunting” them (with a torch) at night when camping – going only by the sound of their call and then trying to work out whether it was a bird we were looking at or just a tree branch.

Tawny Frogmouth

As I got closer to try and get a better shot – he decided he would try and “hide” by turning into a branch – something they generally are very very good at.

Two problems for this guy – I already knew where he was (he didn’t actually move), and he chose a dark coloured tree which he stood out against pretty well. If it were a gum tree he probably would have just about disappeared – I’ve seen them being very tree-like before.

Tawny Frogmouth trying to be tree-like

I could see him watching me out of a narrowly slitted eye, and after about five minutes of me wondering around taking photos, he largely gave up trying to be inconspicuous, but didn’t actually move. I left him to go back to sleep and headed home.