Movember - Sponsor Me

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Kalbarri to Dongara

We stayed an extra day at Kalbarri as Ruby had picked up a stomach bug and we were planning to stay at Coronation Bay which only had drop toilets so we thought that wouldn't be nice for her or for anyone else who caught the bug.
We eventually left kalbarri and drove through a few places, including Pink Lake, the photo above.
Annie and I had reservations about all the places we visited so we eventually ended up at Dongara-Port Denison yesterday and we'll leave here for Eneabba tomorrow.

One of the amazing sights we saw yesterday was this Osprey which was at one of the places we stopped to check out but didn't like. Did like the Osprey though.



We also saw some wonderful patches of flowers, but when we saw the tree below we had to stop and take this photo. The photo probably doesn't do justice to the vibrant orange of the flowers.

Today we had an enjoyable stroll along the banks of the Irwin River in the morning and then headed out in the afternoon to Mingenew and Coalseam. Mingenew is in the wheat belt and we both had a chuckly over the Giant Grains sculpture and had to have a photo!

After spending a short time at Coalseam Nature Reserve, during which Moses had a huge splinter into his knee, we drove home starting about 45 minutes before dusk and came across this snake on the road. Yes it was alive, yes we were close although stayed in the car, and yes, it did seem rather large!
A close up of the snake's head.

We have made it to 120 WA birds identified and catalogued with photos. Pete, I think Clive is safe! The whole family gets involved with identifying and the kids pore over the bird books in the car, requesting looks at the recently taken photo and then declaring their selections. Moses declared a Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike at about 50 metres at Cape Range, and Banjo picked a Woodswallow as we rushed past in the car doing about 75 km/h. Both were correct. Birds of Prey are of particular interest and we often stop the car if we see some soaring above. We have a saying from the trip "it's a Boab!" which has come from our excitement of seeing our first Boab tree when we were driving across from Katherine to Kununurra, to seeing so many Boabs the excitement wains. Nankeen Kestrels are an example of "a boab" as are Pied Cormorants.

Our next post will be from Fremantle. We will be there on Monday 15th and will be staying with Andrew for about 5 days.
Hope everyone is feeling better today than they were yesterday!

WF's

4 comments:

Unknown said...

ok you've got my attention again. wot a fantastic photo (osprey) - well done ruby (or is it hard to get the camera off dad!?)

Congratulations on reaching the top 10 eremaea (hard word to spell that) birders for 2010 WA! You're in some fine company (i think the alcorns @ #10 actually run the website!)

Pete

Unknown said...

PS - any white-tailed black cockies you see are worth ticking off as they are a different species from our yellow tails in the eastern states.... but u have to get close enough to check short or long billed! and if you go to the gloucester tree (moses would love the climb too) you will probably get attacked by western rosellas.

Unknown said...

did i mention that the osprey photo is awesome?

Unknown said...

gee that's a good photo