Thursday, March 29
5:30 am Ballina, NSW, Australia
18 C forecast high 25 C with some showers
11:00 am Geocaching
I needed to find a cache on this date and decided to search for one in Bicentennial Park in Ballina. This turned out to be a quick find.
- GCZPB1 Bicentennial Park
While signing the logbook I also dropped off a Travel Bug that I had brought with me from Canada. I have now found caches on all the days of March except one (March 6). The Travel Bug is one I retrieved in southern Alberta and then learned that it was involved in a global race. The race involves about 50 TBs and has an elaborate set of rules for the TBs to accumulate points while being moved from one geocache to another. Bringing it to Australia will add quite a few points for that TB. Click on Madhatrace for details on this race. The name of the TB I took to Australia is Whale Tail. The games we play!
2:00 PM Birding
We began the morning with a trip to Meldrum Park In Ballina but only saw a couple of Pied Oystercatchers.
Then we drove to Victoria Park west of Ballina. This is a semi-tropical rainforest reserve. The vegetation was very dense making the boardwalk relatively dark and photography difficult.
We were able to identify 2 birds:
- White-browed Scrubwren (first for 2012)
- Pale-yellow Robin (LIFER)
White-browed Scrubwren
The Pale-yellow Robin was our 200th distinct Australian species. Now we can relax.
Then we returned to Ballina in the pouring rain. This was the first real downpour since we arrived. But it was over when we stopped at Shelly beach for a nice lunch.
We ended our birding with another visit to Flat Rocks.
We identified the following birds:
- Arctic Tern [LIFER]
- Great Cormorant
- Pied Cormorant
- Ruddy Turnstone
- Osprey
- Silver Gull
- Crested Tern
- Little Tern
- Eastern Reef Egret
- Fairy Tern (first in 2012)
- Lesser Crested Tern (first in 2012)
- Common Tern
- Red-capped Plover (first in 2012)
Arctic Tern
This time I feel confident of the identification. The coloring is good, the legs are short, the bill is short and black, and the tail feathers are shorter than the wings.
Pied Cormorants & Great Cormorant
Ruddy Turnstone
Lesser Crested Tern & Little Tern
Red-capped Plover
The Arctic Tern was our 5th Australian Lifer for this trip, and our 200th different Australian species. Now to keep counting.