It was with a mixture of happiness, trepidation, and excitement that I learned last year that Nikki received an award from the Australian government to take a master's degree at Australian National University. Happiness because it's a very selective and prestigious scholarship, trepidation because of the suddenly very long distance that we were going to have to deal with, and excitement because it meant that I was going to get the chance to visit her in Australia at some point. In June of this year, I finally got that chance, as I happened on a very good promo price from Cebu Pacific that coincided with her winter vacation.
Since Nikki hadn't had much time to travel around Australia, and I wasn't sure when I'd be back in the country, we decided to spend part of our time doing a road trip from Brisbane down to Sydney so that we could spend some time on the coast and get out of Canberra. It wasn't necessarily a birding trip
per se, since my objective was mostly just to see Nikki and get a taste of Australia, but... when I'm in a place with fauna like Australia's fauna, I'm going to be heading out to see some nature. There were, after all, lots of nature things we both wanted to see. It turns out that June isn't a very good time to be in Australia for birding, as most birds have flown north to spend the winter, but I still returned to the Philippines with over 100 new life birds from a little more than a week of casual birding- nothing to sneeze at.
Nikki met me at the Sydney airport on June 10, and, since it was cold and drizzly in Sydney and we already had bus tickets, we headed directly to Canberra from the airport. The ride from Sydney to the capital is a nice one, along good roads (what a change from the Philippines!) through the Australian countryside. Highlights were a
Spotted Harrier and a pair of
Wedge-tailed Eagles seen from the bus window, the only time I ever ended up seeing the former bird during the trip. When we arrived in Canberra and walked to Nikki's apartment, I had my first taste of proper Aussie trash birds- a flock of
Galahs in the grass on a street corner, with a
Crimson Rosella in the tree above them.
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| Galah |
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| Crimson Rosella |
Yes, that's right. Australia has bubblegum-pink cockatoos and bright-red parrots just casually hanging out in the middle of cities. This is apparently not a big deal to Australians. As someone born in a country where parrots are mainly known as exotic birds from far away lands, and living in a country where most of the native psitaccines are being trapped into extinction, this is a
very big deal. I'm pretty sure about half of my time in Australia consisted of me just gawking at various kinds of parrots hanging out in random places.
It was nearing sunset by the time we reached the apartment and I'd put my things down, but we still had time for a short walk through the Australian National University campus to see where Nikki had classes and also look at birds. It was a good walk for getting to know some of Australia's more common birds, all of which were still new and strange and exciting to me as a newcomer. And really, you can never get enough of Rosellas.
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| Pied Currawong |
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| Female Superb Fairywren |
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| Crimson Rosella |
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| Eastern Rosella, my favorite rosella |
As we were walking around campus, we happened upon a flock of
Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, which were happy to have their picture taken. In contrast to the Lesser Sulphur-crested Cockatoos in Indonesia, which are near extinction, these are some of the most common birds in Australia, and deafeningly noisy like most cockatoos. I have to confess that even as a cockatoo-lover these ones got a bit annoying, especially when I was trying to listen for other birds.
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| Sulphur-crested Cockatoo |
We spent some time hanging out at Sullivan's Creek, a small river running through campus that had some more cool-looking common birds, including
Silver Gulls, Dusky Moorhen, Australasian Swamphen, Maned Ducks, and
Magpie Lark. There was also a flock of
Little Corella, which Nikki said were usually there every evening.
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| Silver Gull |
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| Little Corella |
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| Magpie-lark- actually a massive, aberrant monarch flycatcher |
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| Dusky Moorhen |
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| Maned Duck with an erected "mane" |
As we were walking around we had a surprise appearance from a flock of
Gang-gang Cockatoos, one of the less-common cockatoos in the Canberra area and something Nikki had been searching for for weeks without success. They were great to see, partly so that Nikki could tick off a nemesis bird and partly because they're just weird, cool-looking birds in general.
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| Male Gang-gang Cockatoo |
Just before it got dark, we saw a flock of
Australian King Parrots, the last parrot we were hoping to find that evening. We also got good looks at an
Australian Magpie and an
Australian Raven, two more "trash birds" to round out my first day in the country (and, despite the names, not closely related to each other at all).
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| Australian Magpie- actually a type of currawong, more closely related to Woodswallows than crows and "true" magpies |
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| Australian King Parrot |
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| Australian Raven |
We went on to see some much "better" birds (by birdwatcher's standards), but for a newbie to the continent, everything was new and fantastic for me. For someone used to nothing but bulbuls, starlings, and tree sparrows it was quite something to see all the ridiculous and beautiful types of psittacines found all over Australia.
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