Author Archives: Sarah Maddox
Peregrine Falcon in the suburbs
It was good to see this Peregrine Falcon perched high in a tree above the rooftops in Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
They’re beautiful birds, with that fierce eye and the contrast between yellow and black colouring. I’ve seen just a few Peregrine Falcons before, usually in a wilder setting. Check out the posts about my other sightings of Peregrine Falcons.
Common name: Peregrine Falcon
Scientific name: Falco Peregrinus
Approximate length: 42 cm
Date spotted: 15 February 2025 (summer)
Location: Allambie Heights, New South Wales, Australia. Approximate map reference: 33°46’18.2″S 151°15’39.4″E
Lost! Baby Purple Swamphen
A baby Purple Swamphen hops around the lily pads, sticking close to the safety of her mother. But where is her little brother?
I love the baby birds’ tiny little wings. They look like little arms flapping about. At first, I thought that the baby had caught a frog. No, it’s just those little wing stubs.
But where is her brother? Another tiny little Purple Swamphen is lost amongst the reeds! It’s hard to see how such a tiny thing can find his way back to his mother and sister, so far away among the giant lily pads:
I don’t know whether these birds are male or female, so I’ve just picked pronouns at random. Both sexes of Purple Swamphens look after their young, and they’re hard to tell apart.
Mother might not have the most beautiful face, but she offers safety and comfort:
Will the little one find his way back? His sister gazes across the lily pads, as if searching for him:
At last, the wanderer spots his family and hurries across the lily pads. His sister greets him warmly, while mother looks on fondly:
Common name: Purple Swamphen
Scientific name: Porphyrio porphyrio
Approximate length of adult: 50 cm
Date spotted: 5 February 2025 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’35.4″S 151°14’49.1″E
Python has just swallowed a meal
A few days ago, I saw this Diamond Python on Manly North Head near Sydney. The snake has recently had a meal, hence the thickening in part of the body. I’ve drawn a rough outline in a copy of the picture, so that you can see the shape of the snake more clearly.
The snake’s head is resting on its body near the middle of the picture. The snake lies mostly straight, with just one bend at the bottom of the picture. It’s well camouflaged, even though it’s lying out in the open to bask in the sun and digest its meal.
Diamond Pythons are just one of several types of pythons found in Australia, and are native to south eastern New South Wales. They’re large snakes, growing up to three metres long. They aren’t venomous, though they do have teeth and can bite. They lie in wait for their prey, and kill it by squeezing it to death. They eat the animal whole, then digest it once it’s inside their stomach. That’s what’s made the large bulge in this particular snake.
If you’d like to hear the story of another of these snakes, take a look at a Diamond Python in a Banksia tree.
A rather shaggy Whipbird
This little whipbird looks as if it hasn’t combed its feathers in a while. Still, it’s a nice-looking bird. It might be a juvenile, still coming into full feather:
Whipbirds spend their time mostly in the low shrubbery, often rustling around in the leaves on the ground. As a result, they’re hard to spot and they usually look dark brown and black in colour. It’s nice to see one with a bit of sunlight on its feathers, bringing out the soft olive green glow on the wings and tail.
The noise that whipbirds make is strange: “eeeuuw-phwit”. It reminds people of a whip whistling and cracking, and that’s what gives the bird its name. I managed to get a good video of them calling, which I published in an earlier post.
Common name: Eastern Whipbird
Scientific name: Psophodes olivaceus
Approximate length: 30 cm
Date spotted: 16 January 2025 (summer)
Location: Dobroyd Head in Sydney Harbour, NSW, Australia: 33°48’34.0″S 151°16’25.3″E
A beautiful orange cormorant
Usually, Little Pied Cormorants have bright white and shiny black feathers. This one, though, has a lovely burnished orange head and chest. This is probably due to staining from natural iron deposits in the water.
Here’s a short video, showing the back of the bird’s head with a neat black stripe between the orange feathers of the bird’s face:
Common name: Little Pied Cormorant
Scientific name: Phalacrocorax melanoleucos
Approximate length: 60 cm
Date spotted: 20 January 2025 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam, Allambie Heights, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’35.1″S 151°14’48.5″E
Termites and kookaburras
Termites are very active in our area of the world at the moment: the east coast of Australia just north of Sydney. When walking along a road that passes through a park area, it’s common to see low mud tunnels crossing the road. Termites build these tunnels to shelter in when they’re on their travels. Recently, I’ve also seen long trains of termites venturing out without any cover at all.
Here’s a stream of termites crossing the road. They’ve even built themselves a junction so that they can head off in different directions:
Termites’ mud tunnels often go up the outside of a tree:
The termites in this part of Australia build their nests as large mud mounds, stuck high up in a tree:
Termite nests make a handy home for monitor lizards, kookaburras, kingfishers, and other creatures. In an earlier post, I showed pictures of a termite nest that had been adopted by kookaburras as a home for their young family: Baby kookaburras out of their nest.
In the next video, two young kookaburras attack the side of a termite nest, slowly digging a hole in the nest. They’re probably thinking ahead to the next breeding season, when such a home will come in useful:
In the video, you can hear the two kookaburras chattering, and other kookaburras giving the full laughing cackle in the background. There are also cicadas singing, and a butcherbird calls at one time too.
Common name: Laughing Kookaburra
Scientific name: Dacelo novaeguineae
Approximate length: 47 cm
Date spotted: 13 January 2025 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam near Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Spider wasp in my house
Warning: This blog post could be scary and off-putting. Nothing bad happens to me, but by nature the wasp isn’t very nice to the spider.
Not a bird in sight, but a bird would definitely have found this sight interesting. A large, red wasp appeared in the room where I was sitting. It flew around a bit, then disappeared. A minute later, it re-appeared and dumped a paralysed huntsman spider at my feet!
The wasp is called a “spider wasp”. I think this particular variety is a tarantula hawk wasp. It injects venom into a spider, often a huntsman, which paralyses the spider. The wasp then drags the spider into its nest and lays eggs inside the spider. When the wasp eggs hatch, the larvae feed off the spider.
Now, if you’ve ever seen a huntsman, you’ll know that they’re not small as far as spiders go. I’ve seen wasps like this one in the garden, sometimes performing amazing feats with a spider in tow. One wasp crawled a vertical rock face, several metres high, dragging a spider behind it.
Fascinating as these creatures are, I didn’t really want a wasp nest with a paralysed spider as food source in my house. I feel bad for the spider. Plus, tarantula hawk wasps evidently have an extremely painful sting.
While the wasp was still pre-occupied with the spider, I managed to cover both with a large beer glass. This photo shows the wasp with its feet still partly holding the spider:
Immediately, the wasp started prowling around the edge of the glass. This photo is clearer than the one above, and has my husband’s finger for scale:
Look at that poor spider’s eyes.
We’ve had other types of wasps in the house. They come in, fly around and inspect the walls, and with any luck fly out again. Sometimes they decide to build a nest. The most common wasps that we see are dark in colour, of medium size, and build cocoons of mud to house their eggs. It’s quite astounding to see how fast they build these constructs. But I do draw the line at tarantula hawk wasps.
Baby kookaburras out of nest
For the past month, I’ve been watching a termite nest that housed two Laughing Kookaburra chicks. The kookaburra parents had set up house in an old termite nest in a dead tree. The sound of the chicks crooning drew me to the tree on November 21st. The chicks were still very young, and it wasn’t possible to see them. But after waiting around a while, I did see the parents bringing food to the nest:
A month later, on December 20th, the chicks were right at the opening of the nest, peering out at the world. This photo shows one of the babies — you can see one eye clearly on the right, then the beak and white bib and the other eye on the left:
Here’s a view of the termite nest at the top of a dead tree. The nest projects from the top the right of the dead trunk, nicely protected by the branches of a living tree:
Here’s one of the parents with a morsel of food — a winged insect of some kind:
By my next visit, on December 23rd, the nest was empty. Both babies were out and about, calling and being fed by the adult birds.
One of the babies was on the ground when I got there, but soon managed to fly up onto a tree branch. The parents were nearby and attentive:
The youngsters are a bit smaller than the adults, and more fluffy. Their feathers aren’t yet fully developed, especially on the head and wings, and the tails are noticeably shorter.
The other youngster was on a nearby branch, also crooning:
This photo shows the youngster’s short tail:
To close off, here’s the same youngster from another angle:
Common name: Laughing Kookaburra
Scientific name: Dacelo novaeguineae
Approximate length (adult): 47 cm
Date spotted: 21 November to 23 December 2024 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam near Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Call of the White-cheeked Honeyeater
White-cheeked Honeyeaters have a rather monotonous call. This bird sat on a branch and called for a few minutes:
White-cheeked Honeyeaters are quite small (16-19 cm from tip of beak to tip of tail) and have a long, curved beak for delving into blossoms. They’re very similar in appearance to New Holland Honeyeaters. In fact, the two species often hang out together.
Here’s a still picture of the bird that was singing:
To learn more about these birds and the very similar New Holland Honeyeaters, check out my related posts.
Common name: White-cheeked Honeyeater
Scientific name: Phylidonyris nigra
Approximate length: 16-19 cm
Date spotted: 21 December 2024 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’24.3″S 151°15’06.3″E
Pretty Dollarbird near Sydney
Dollarbirds are migratory, which makes it a treat to see the first one of the spring!
They’re pretty birds, with the shades of green-blue in their feathers and the striking orange of their beaks and feet. Their habit is to sit on very high tree branches or power lines, making it tricky to take a photo. This one was in an area of coastal scrub and low trees on the edge of Sydney harbour, which meant that the highest perch the bird could find wasn’t too high, and I could take a near-decent photo.
When Dollarbirds fly, you see the round white circles on the underside of their wings. Those circles reminded people of the old silver Australian dollar coin, hence the bird’s name.
I’ve posted about earlier sightings of Dollarbirds, including a video of a pair courting. It’s worth a watch.
Common name: Dollarbird
Scientific name: Eurystomus orientalis
Approximate length: 27 cm
Date spotted: 10 December 2024 (summer)
Location: Dobroyd Head, Sydney Harbour, NSW, Australia: 33°48’33.8″S 151°16’25.1″E
Sydney Birder 