Glossy Black-Cockatoo
Five Glossy-Black Cockatoos are frequent visitors to the Casuarina trees on the edge of Manly dam at the moment. Here’s one of the birds:
Common name: Glossy Black-Cockatoo
Scientific name: Calyptorhynchus lathami
Approximate length: 50cm
Date spotted: 27 October 2024 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam Park, near Sydney: 33°46’16.4″S 151°14’30.9″E
Mmm, Mountain Devil flowers make a nice change from those tough Banksia pods!
A Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoo contemplates life while demolishing the flower of a Mountain Devil bush.
Common name: Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo
Scientific name: Calyptorhynchus funereus or Zanda funereus
Length: 58-65 cm
Date spotted: 26 October 2024 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’40.0″S 151°14’50.2″E
Whistling Kite at Myall Lakes
This weekend I took a walk from Mungo Brush Campground to the Tamboi picnic area at Myall Lakes. A bird of prey was calling and swooping far away on the opposite side of the wide, serene Myall River. After a bit of research, considering the appearance of the bird and the sound of its call, my conclusion is that it’s a Whistling Kite.
The pictures aren’t great, because the bird was far away. This one shows its head and body:
The next picture gives a better idea of its tail:
I did take some shots of the bird in flight, but they’re too fuzzy to be of much use. Still, you can see them on my Reddit post if you’re interested.
Whistling Kites are large birds of prey, found throughout most of Australia. They’re also called whistling eagles or whistling hawks. I’ve seen one before, on the Bogan River in western New South Wales, and another on Magnetic Island in Queensland.
Common name: Whistling Kite
Scientific name: Haliastur sphenurus
Approximate length: 50-60 cm; wing span 1.2-1.5 m
Date spotted: 20 October 2024 (spring)
Location: Myall Lakes National Park, New South Wales, Australia: 32°33’03.8″S 152°17’10.5″E
Rainbow Bee-eaters at Mungo Brush
I’ve just spent the weekend camping at Mungo Brush on the NSW east coast. Mungo Brush is a wilderness area about two hours’ drive north of Newcastle and about three hours from Sydney. The distance is enough to make for a different set of birds to look at. While strolling along a path towards the beach, I saw four Rainbow Bee-eaters. Here are two of them:
It looks like one of the birds is offering the other a snack, which might of course be a bee!
At first, I thought these birds were a colourful type of kingfisher. Then I zoomed in on the photograph and saw the long appendages on their tails. It’s interesting that my bird book names kingfishers as birds that are similar to bee-eaters.
Common name: Rainbow Bee-eater
Scientific name: Merops ornatus
Approximate length: 23-27 cm
Date spotted: 19 October 2024 (spring)
Location: Mungo Brush, NSW, Australia: 32°30’31.1″S 152°21’41.3″E
Fairy-wren an early Christmas decoration
A Variegated Fairy-wren paused for a second on a tree draped with lichen. It brought to mind a Christmas scene, with the bird a bauble that adds its bright colours to the grey of the tree and the rather surreal green tinsel formed by the lichen.
Common name: Variegated Fairy-wren
Scientific name: Malurus lamberti
Approximate length: 13 cm
Date spotted: 17 October 2024 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam park, near Sydney: 33°46’23.1″S 151°14’35.9″E
What does a Darter sound like? Plus random turtles.
Darters are large water birds, a bit like cormorants. They make a weird cackling sound, a bit like a sardonic duck. And they only do it every now and then, for a short time, so you have to just be there with your camera ready if you want to record the call.
I was lucky to be looking at a kingfisher through the camera lens when a darter started cackling nearby. Here’s what I got on camera — the darter call is right at the start of the video. Also, when watching the video I noticed there are a couple of turtles on a log at bottom left of the shot, visible just as the camera starts zooming out.
Here’s the darter with its beak open. I’m not sure if it was thinking of cackling again or if something was tickling its throat. It is, after all, rather a long throat:
Here’s a pic showing the turtles on the log at bottom left. I didn’t know they were there until I saw the photos on a big screen. There are at least two turtles, one behind the other, and possibly a third below them:
This bird is a male, with its black neck and red throat.
Common name: Darter
Scientific name: Anhinga melanogaster
Approximate length: 90 cm; wing span: 1.2 m
Date spotted: 10 October 2024 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’34.7″S 151°14’48.9″E
Very light-coloured Grey Goshawk
This is a Grey Goshawk, but it’s a lot lighter in colour than others I’ve seen, and it doesn’t seem to have the barring on its front (though I didn’t get to see it fully front on). It was at Manly Dam in Sydney’s Northern Beaches area.
There are two colour variations in the Grey Goshawk: the white morph and the grey morph. The white morph is found in north-western Australia, Tasmania, and the Victorian coast. It isn’t known to be found near Sydney. Besides which, this bird has light grey plumage as well as white, whereas the white morph is entirely white.
Whatever the answer to the question about its colour, this is a gorgeous bird.
Common name: Grey Goshawk
Scientific name: Accipiter novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 40-55 cm. Wing span: 70-110 cm.
Date spotted: 1 October 2024 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’22.5″S 151°14’35.7″E
Amazing wrap-around spider
When I approached my car the other day, I saw a patch of something on the door handle. “Bird dropping,” I thought, and was about to wipe it off. Then I noticed that the blotch was symmetrical. Uh oh. I looked more closely. A spider, and a real cutie. I’d have been devastated if I’d hurt it.
This is what it looks like when zoomed in on my camera:
The spider has wrapped itself around the door handle, to be as flat and inconspicuous as possible. The photo above shows the body of the spider. Its head is below, mostly hidden from view. The colours and patterns on the body are amazing. I think they’re enhanced because it had been raining and the spider was wet.
Here’s a picture with my hand and the keyhole, for scale:
I took the above photo the day after the first one. Yes, the spider was still there. It was dry this time, and therefore less colourful. And it had moved from the top to the bottom of the door handle.
Here’s the spider’s face, viewed from underneath the door handle:
And here’s as much of the head and body as I could get into one shot:
Wrap-around spiders (genus Dolophones) have a flat, curved abdomen, so that they can wrap themselves around branches. This makes them good at disappearing into their surrounds. They build an orb web every evening, and destroy it each morning. I guess those strands of web on the door handle are the remains of last night’s web.
Since the spider had been on the door handle for two days, it looked like it had taken up residence. I don’t think spiders and door handles are a good match, so I persuaded the spider onto a leaf and moved it into the nearby shrubbery:
Green huntsman spider
Up to now, all the huntsman spiders that I’ve seen have been brown. Some were darker, others lighter, but basically brown. I was surprised to see this little one the other day:
It was quite small, for a huntsman, but still a good size spider. In real life, it appeared even more green than the photo shows. I had to Google it, to discover that indeed, green huntsman spiders are a thing. This one was in Allambie Heights, north of Sydney, NSW. I hope to see it again!
The tranquil parrot: Glossy-black Cockatoos
Of all the various types of cockatoos that we get in our area of Australia, the Glossy-blacks are by far the most restful to be with. When they chatter to each other, their call is a restful croon. They seem to take life easy, with few sudden moves. Watch this one going with the flow while the wind tosses her perch back and forth:
Casuarina seeds are just about the only food that Glossy-black Cockatoos eat. I usually find the birds by the comfortable munching noises that they make, rather than the noisy fuss that other types of cockatoos are fond of making!
This family of three birds has been visiting the Casuarina trees beside one of my current favourite bush walks.
I took these pictures over the period of a week.
It’s interesting that I almost always see these birds in groups of three, most likely an adult male and female, and a juvenile. The bird with yellow around her head is the female of the group. I think this one is the adult male:
Check out some previous sightings of these gorgeous birds.
Common name: Glossy Black-Cockatoo
Scientific name: Calyptorhynchus lathami
Approximate length: 50cm
Date spotted: 23-27 September 2024 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam Park, near Sydney: 33°46’16.4″S 151°14’30.9″E
Sydney Birder 