October 4

Thursday October 4, 2007 5:40 am Lennox Head, NSW Australia

A. Morning Musings

5:40 am

I am sleeping like a baby - about 8 hours each night. I have the coffee in the pot and am ready for another sunny day. There are some fires near Evans Head, so we plan to return to Flat Rock to see if there is any change in the shore birds that frequent that area.

Reading and studying of any kind has taken a back seat to birding and crossword puzzles. I spent a couple of hours yesterday editing the photos I took of the whales a few days ago.

Immediate	Description	Time
Birding	Birding at Flat Rock & Lake Chiciba	4 hr
Birding	Editing and cataloguing birding photos	4 hr
Literature	"The Untouchable" by John Banville	1 hr

C. Actual Learning Activities

1:30 PM

The air is quite smoky. There is a large bushfire near Evans Head. The paper says over 2500 hectares have been destroyed and that they are hoping for a shift in the wind later in the day.

We are back from a birding trip. It began about 8 this morning when we went to Flat Rock to see if we could see any shore birds at low tide. At first it didn't look like much and it was very windy. Then we noticed both a sooty oystercatcher and a pied oystercatcher! That made our day.

oystercatcher

We went into Ballina to celebrate with a cappucino at the Pelican 181. But on the way to the coffee shop I stopped off at the ABC shop and ended up buying 4 more books (ones that would be difficult to find in Canada).

Selected Poems (2007) by Les Murray
- I have two of his books from previous trips and I thoroughly enjoy them. I am looking forward to this.
Diamonds and Dust (2007) by Sheryl McCorry
- This is an autobiography of a young woman in the Kimberley area of West Australia who runs a million-acre cattle station.
First Love (1860) by Ivan Turgenev
- I have a couple of his books, and when I saw this I immediately had to buy it.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (12th century)
- I recently was reminded of this classic while reading the math book "Why Beauty is Truth".

Then on the drive back to Lennox we noticed a few shorebirds at Lake Chickiba, a tidal salty lake beside the road between Ballina and Lennox Head. We stayed there for almost 2 hours and had a great time taking photos of little brown things as well as a glorious Great Egret in lacy breeding plumage.

egret