AUSTRALIA - HOLIDAY/RECCE TOUR - DAY 13 - OCT 9TH - MOLLYMOOK TO SYDNEY

BURRILL LAKE -  TRANSFER FROM MOLLYMOOK TO SYDNEY WITH STOPS AT ROYAL NATIONAL PARK

I took an early morning ride down to Burrill Lake, we had stopped there yesterday and I thought it had potential to produce some waterfowl if I turned up early enough. It was a lovely morning, the overnight rain had stopped and it was quite warm.

ROYAL SPOONBILL

But despite good light and very light winds there were very few birds on or near the water, the usual Pelicans and a variety of cormorants, ducks and coots were either asleep or feeding. A group of Little Black Cormorants dropped into the water nearby and one of them immediately caught a fish within milliseconds a second bird skilfully stole the fish and swallowed it without even a ‘beg your pardon’.

A GREAT WHITE..........EGRET NOT SHARK!

 I drove to several viewing points around the lake and added Pied Oystercatcher, Great White Egret,  Masked Lapwing, Hardhead (white-eyed) Duck, Chestnut Teal and Dusky Moorhen to the day list. But before I left disappointed I poked my nose around to the other side of the highway on the sea-side of the lake and struck lucky with a find of 5 Royal Spoonbills, that concluded my visit and my birding in the Ulladulla region.

After packing our suitcases and putting the house back into ship-shape condition we set off for Sydney by following the A1, Princes Highway all the way to the airport. We stopped near Jervis Bay for another quick look for Eastern Bristlebird without luck and made a couple of impromptu stops when we saw birds from the car. The first was a sighting of a big bird on a fence post, it looked like an Osprey to me but when I got it in my bins it turned out to be a Straw-necked Ibis preening. There were several others feeding in the field below it.

 A toilet stop near Wallagong produced a flock of European Goldfinches, some House Sparrows and a few Common Starlings, I could have been in South Wales not New South Wales!

We entered the Royal National Park at Waterfall and took our time driving round to Audley where we parked up and walked around the visitor’s centre. There were hundreds of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos on the lawns, they were very tame, one flew onto to a post next to me and knocked over my expensive cup of coffee, another fed out of my hand and bit into my finger when I ran out of sweet corn!

 

We caught up with our first Little Corellas and saw many other common species in the area. We decided against going for a walk after getting several warnings of car theft in the area, we had all our belongings with us so we left without doing our visit to this wonderful birding site any justice at all, next time I will make an all day visit.

 

 

WHERE'S THAT BIRD?

OH THERE IT IS

MONITOR LIZARD ABOUT 1 METER IN LENGTH

LITTLE CORELLA

 The rest of the afternoon was taken up by driving to Sydney Airport taking the car back to the hire company and getting a shuttle to our hotel. We were staying overnight in preparation for our flight to CAIRNS to start the next stage of our adventure down under.

 

 

 

We now had 142 species on the list, a little shy of the 150 that I had predicted and hoped for.

New birds for the list:

 Royal Spoonbill
Straw-necked Ibis

Little Corella
European Goldfinch