Author Archives: Sarah Maddox
Sleepy Corellas in Newcastle
A few days ago, I was in the city of Newcastle on Australia’s east coast. The city lies about two hours’ drive north of Sydney. Like its namesake in the UK, this Newcastle too is known as a coal-shipping port. A river runs through the city. In a small green area on the river bank, in the middle of the city, a large number of Corellas roost.
When we saw them, most of the Corellas looked sleepy:
This one looks like a cuddly toy nestled in a Christmas tree:
Little Corellas are a type of cockatoo. To me, they look rather ghostly, with their pale beaks and that ring of pale blue around their eyes.
The next one looks more interested in what’s happening:
If you’d like to see more pictures of the city of Newcastle itself, take a look at my travelling bookmark’s blog.
Common name: Little Corella
Scientific name: Cacatua sanguinea
Approximate length: 36-39 cm
Date spotted: 11 March 2022 (late summer)
Location: Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia: 32°55’32.3″S 151°46’45.4″E
Crested Tern taking a bath at Newcastle Ocean Baths
Yesterday I visited the city of Newcastle for the first time. This is Newcastle on the eastern coast of Australia, not the one in the UK. While strolling along the prom, approaching the Newcastle Ocean Baths, I saw a Crested Tern enjoying a bath in the rock pool that lies on one side of the baths:
Common name: Crested Tern
Scientific name: Sterna bergii
Approximate length: 45 cm
Date spotted: 11 March 2022 (late summer)
Location: Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia: -32.929794, 151.789490
Here’s a picture of the building that you glimpse at the end of the video — the Newcastle Ocean Baths:
Young Kookaburra learning call from adult
The bush is alive with the sound of young Kookaburras practising their call. They sound like rusty saws, or motor engines that can’t quite start. After crooning away to itself for a while, this little one approached an adult for a lesson!
Common name: Laughing Kookaburra
Scientific name: Dacelo novaeguineae
Approximate length: 47 cm
Date spotted: 3 March 2022 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’56.3″S 151°15’10.4″E
Moody pics of Huntsman spider on my bannister
Early one morning a few weeks ago, I encountered a huntsman spider on the bannister of a staircase inside my house. I was coming up the stairs from below, and was moving my hand along the top of the railing as I went. Then my head came level with the railing, and there was the spider at eye level.
First wildlife close encounter of the day, and I hadn’t even been outside yet! Life in Oz. 🙂
This is a big spider, about the size of the palm of my hand.
It looked as surprised as I was!
It was still dark and the lighting in this area of the house isn’t bright. I didn’t like using the flash on my phone too much, in case it damaged the spider’s eyes, so I found a torch. Hence the bluesy tone of this next photo:
Huntsman spiders are big and scary, but they avoid contact with people if they can, and their venom isn’t too bad if they do bite. They won’t kill you, like some of the other Australian spiders.
Huntsmen generally run away from humans. They don’t go out of their way to bite unless actively threatened. This one might have had good reason to feel threatened by my hand coming towards it along the bannister, though!
And though we see them fairly often and I know they always run away, I do admit to uttering a restrained (not so much) gasp when I saw this one at eye level.
I was heading out for a walk, so I left the spider there, on the bannister, with a scribbled note next to it saying “spider” and an eloquent arrow, so that my husband wouldn’t have the same close encounter that I did.
When I came back, the spider had gone and my husband hadn’t seen it. Who knows where it is now? I’m sure I’ll see it again some early morning!
Large net-casting spider
While doing some gardening a couple of weeks ago, I came across this large, unique-looking spider. It was on my green bin, where I was about to deposit a load of garden trimmings. I didn’t want to hurt the spider, so I carefully moved it onto the nearby vegetation, after taking a couple of photos.
Here’s the spider, with my finger for scale:
It has its legs neatly clumped together in four groups of two. The body is long and thin, with two little humps on the sides about half way down the length. It’s head, seen from above, forms a neat triangle with two bulbs at the front.
Today I spent some time figuring out what type of spider it is. It turns out to be a net-casting spider. I wish I’d know that at the time! Evidently the spider has two huge eyes (under those bulbs seen here from above) and its face looks a little scary. As well as earning the name net-casting spiders, they’re also called ogre-faced spiders! I wish I’d got down onto the ground and looked at the spider from below, so that I could see its eyes and ogre face.
Here’s another picture, without the finger this time:
Why the name net-casting spider? These creatures spin a small square of web each night, which they hold in their front legs and cast over their prey. That’s why they have big eyes: to be able to see their prey in the dark.
Fascinating. It’s a jungle out there.
St Andrew’s Cross spider mother and babies
In mid January, in the heat of an Australian summer, a St Andrew’s Cross spider built her web outside my window.
The photo shows the underneath of the spider, a few blobs of dead insect matter, and the characteristic thickened web lines radiating out from the spider’s legs. This cross-shaped formation is what gives the spider its name.
A few days after she arrived, she created an egg sac in the corner of the window sill. The sac was about the size of the top part of my finger, and had an unusual spoon shape. I wasn’t sure what it was — maybe some form of wasp nest? I didn’t really want one of those just outside the window, which is always open in the summer heat, so I moved the little sac down into another part of the garden.
The next day, another egg sac appeared, looking exactly the same as the first one. I decided it must belong to the spider, who had now moved her web even closer to the egg sac. So I let it be.
Here it is from a different angle:
Two weeks later, the spiders hatched! I saw them for the first time early one morning. A cloud of baby St Andrews Cross spiders, just hatched, glowing in the early sun:
The mother hung above on her web, silhouetted against the rising sun:
Evidently the mother will eat the babies if any of them strays onto her web. She’s also partial to chomping off a leg or two from the male spider while mating.
Nine hours later, it was mid afternoon and the sun had moved off the web. The babies had clumped together in a different pattern:
Early the next morning, the cloud-like formation was back. There was still a bit of clumping, though, as shown by the shadows:
It’s a little like a slow-motion kaleidoscope!
The next day, all the little ones were gone, leaving behind an empty shell of an egg sac. Baby St Andrew’s Cross spiders travel by floating away on a strand of silk.
The mother is still at my window, safe and sound.
Grey Goshawk at Manly Dam
Yesterday, in the quiet early-morning hours, I spotted a Grey Goshawk at Manly Dam. This is only the second time I’ve seen one of these birds (the first was two years ago). Both times, I’ve been impressed with the atmosphere of calm that the bird projects. I guess if I were a mouse, my impression might be different!
In the video, you can hear Rainbow Lorikeets scolding and a wattlebird croaking. The hawk itself is silent. At the end, the hawk turns and drops off the branch to fly away. I watched this bird for a while, as it flew from tree to tree. The way it dropped off the branch at the start of flight was similar each time.
Common name: Grey Goshawk
Scientific name: Accipiter novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 40-55 cm. Wing span: 70-110 cm.
Date spotted: 14 January 2022 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’53.6″S 151°15’08.7″E
Baby Channel-billed Cuckoos fed by Currawongs
Walking along a shady path this morning, I heard a loud caterwauling from above. Two baby Channel-billed Cuckoos sat in the trees, yowling and shaking their wings. A Currawong arrived and fed a piece of meat to one of the cuckoos. Then another Currawong brought food to the second screeching youngster.
Like most cuckoos, Channel-billed Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and leave it to those other birds to hatch the egg and look after the growing chick. These particular cuckoos are very large (around 65 cm from head to tail) and so they need to pick the adoptive parents carefully. Currawongs are the usual choice.
This video shows one of the babies yowling and begging for food from its Currawong adoptive parent:
See how large the baby is in relation to the Currawong who’s looking after it! In the next video, one of the babies attempts to eat a largish morsel of meat that a Currawong has just fed to it:
I’ve never seen two babies together before. I wonder if they both came from the same nest, or if they found each other after leaving their nests?
Here’s a still picture of one of the baby cuckoos:
Being a youngster, its eyes are still light brown. The adult birds have fierce red eyes. They’re magnificently ugly birds.
In the next picture, one of the babies is pointing its beak at the sky, perhaps wondering where its next feed is coming from:
That picture gives a good view of the bird’s large beak and the markings on its back and tail.
One of the things you notice about Channel-billed Cuckoos is the supple way they move their neck and head. Here’s one of the babies leaning forward, in a pose that’s typical of these birds:
Oo-er, you probably wouldn’t want to bump into that bird one dark night. Here’s a picture of both baby cuckoos, looking at each other:
To finish off with, here’s a close up of one of the babies, head and neck only:
You can find out more about these birds in my other posts about cuckoos.
Common name: Channel-billed Cuckoo
Scientific name: Scythrops novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 58-65 cm
Date spotted: 18 December 2021 (summer)
Location: Manly-to-Spit Walk, Balgowlah, New South Wales, Australia: 33°48’00.9″S 151°15’54.9″E
Dollarbirds courting
It’s that time of year for birds on the south east coast of Australia: breeding season! I heard a cosy chattering sound high in the treetops. My superzoom camera revealed two Dollarbirds getting friendly:
Dollarbirds are migratory. They travel down to the south east coast of Australia for the summer months (roughly September to March) then fly up north to warmer climes for the winter.
They get their name from the white circular markings on the undersides of their wings. The white circles reminded people of the old silver Australian one-dollar coins. You can see the flash of white nicely when the male flies off at the end of the video.
This still photo shows the blue-green colouring of the birds. They have soft brown heads and pretty purple shading under the beak:
Common name: Dollarbird
Scientific name: Eurystomus orientalis
Approximate length: 30 cm
Date spotted: 29 November 2021 (late spring)
Location: North Harbour Reserve, Balgowlah, NSW: 33°47’59.4″S 151°15’57.8″E
Rainbow Lorikeets enjoying our Banksia flowers
One of our Banksia trees has covered itself in blooms. The local Rainbow Lorikeets are delighted. A delighted lorikeet is a noisy lorikeet! In fact, anyone who lives near these birds will tell you that a lorikeet in any type of mood is a noisy creature.
One day was quite breezy. I like this video because of the way the bird hangs on to the Banksia flower as it sways in the wind, and because you get a chance to see the bird’s colourful underside as well as its topside.
Here are a couple of the birds lurking on a nearby tree before making the hop down to the Banksia:
I’m so lucky to have these pretty, chatty little birds dropping in regularly to see what’s what.
Common name: Rainbow Lorikeet
Scientific name: Trichoglossus haematodus
Approximate length: 30 cm
Date spotted: November 2021 (spring)
Location: Australian east coast, about 20km north of Sydney
Sydney Birder 