The Birds

Rainbow lorikeet in bottlebrush. Somewhere in Woy Woy.

Out on the balcony this morning listening to the bird sounds all around me. There was a couple of lorrikeets fighting over a juicy flower in a nearby tree, two magpies and a mynah hypnotised by the movement of my spoon from bowl to mouth, a family of kookaburras several trees away having a morning chuckle, a flock of seagulls wheeling over the ridge towards the water and a lone pelican floating against the clouds. At sunset the cockies and galahs will fly over low screeching and calling to one another.

Never really noticed before how many there are around my place. Perhaps it's the rain making them breed extra this year.




Sulphur-crested cockatoo. Noisy buggers. They fly low overhead at sunset and screech loud enough to wake the dead.

Note the black cockatoos in flight on either side. Painted on a bus-shelter at Taylor Street Woy Woy Bay.

Added to the ones I can see from my balcony there's all the other birds I've seen on my walkies:

Australian ravens and the seldom-seen black cockatoo
Flocks of pelicans spiralling high into the sky in the summer heat and in the teeth of a storm, or camped on the roof of the fish-and-chip shop waiting for the midday fishheads.
Ducks and geese
Shags
Pink-and-grey galahs
Cormorants and plump white wading birds with yellow beaks
Brush turkeys pacing irritably along side streets up on the ridges or scratching the shit out of people's gardens

One I haven't see and would love to is the Bush stone curlew over who's habitat on Veron Road the fight is still ongoing



Geese or muscovy ducks. Correa Bay Reserve Woy Woy South.




Mallard ducks in Davistown.




Shag on a rock. Henderson Road Saratoga.




The ubiquitous seagulls and pelicans. Correa Bay Reserve Woy Woy South.




Kookaburra at Red Cross in Gosford, up on the hill on the edge of Rumbalara Reserve.




Brush turkey hurrying away from the camera like a film star, up on the ridge in Tascott.




Painting of a brush turkey from a bus-shelter in Taylor Street Woy Woy.


Some of the birds on Lion Island would be coming across to the mainland all the time but there's a few there I'd never see.


Aaardvaark's Australian bird photos - very patient man with a lens


Highway to Hell

Great account of a rock-climb gone haywire here. Has pictures and a map link showing their trip from Patonga to Woy Woy via the shore opposite Dangar Island (don't ask). Map link's at the top of the thumbnails.