After lunch we had a walk around the ocean baths at Newcastle NSW. Here's a bunch of sooty oystercatchers settling in for the night on the rocks just past the baths.
Just after this, with the sun dipping, we saw dolphins working the waters around the baths. At least four, likely five or more. Always a wee thrill!
Here's the Afrocarpus tree in all its glory, decorated with sulphur-crested cockatoos. Underneath, you can see how much debris they drop while eating.
Sometimes it's easier to eat from the ground where bits of branches have been dropped.
Another shot of cockatoos munching on Afrocarpus cones. You can see that they are messy eaters, quite a lot dropping to the ground below.
Yesterday on our way to "lunch" on Beaumont Street around 4:40pm, we took the scenic route through Gregson Park. And were rewarded with cockatoos in the big Afrocarpus tree 🎉
It's a huge tree that has cones like beads, about a centimetre in diameter. Cockatoos love them. Nom nom!
Very kind of the Queens Wharf Hotel to provide this little perch for welcome swallows.
The surf might have been really rough but a bird's gotta eat. This black shag didn't seem to be at all bothered by it, and I saw it swallow at least one catch while I was there.
Please excuse photographs from the back of a bus, but this is what the north-west corner of Lambton Road and Bridges Road, New Lambton NSW is like in Autumn: parrots. Lots of parrots.
There's a bunch of Afrocarpus trees there, and sulfur-crested cockatoos love munching on their cones. They also like ripping up the grass to get to the tasty bits below.
Walking back from Bibina to a bus stop, we came across this lovely bunch of birds around a storm water channel. Right next to the very busy Hillsborough Road.
"Birds of a feather", etc.
Bellycan
peter renshaw