NORTHWEST NSW

Travelling east from Brewarrina, over the next couple of weeks we visited various areas while enjoying the spectacular winter weather. These honeyeaters were basking in the sun next to our van at Lightning Ridge.

Blue-faced Honeyeaters

As were this pair of swallows on our washing line, while staying near the farming community of Burren Junction. 

This small town is renowned in the Aussie birding world as the temporary home of a vagrant wader from Asia in 2006, a Grey-Headed Lapwing. I twitched it with three friends, along with probably hundreds of others in the four months it stayed. This record was a first for Australia and possibly the Southern Hemisphere.

Welcome Swallows 

Nothing quite as exciting this time around, although the sunsets were quite impressive.

Sunset at Burren Junction

It also boasts a top free camping site and bore baths with hot water direct from the Great Artesian Basin. Very nice on a cool winters day!

From Narrabri we explored the nearby Nandewar Ranges, the remnants of an ancient basaltic shield volcano, with Mt Kaputar being the highest point.

Red Wattlebird

Mt Kaputar- 1508 metres 

Australian Raven

One of the more spectacular sights was the forty metre high Sawn Rocks, a wall of pentagonal basalt pipes, the remains of a lava flow from the old volcano.

Sawn Rocks

Looking for raptors

The canola crops were flowering under the winter sun and made for a colourful foreground to the rugged ranges.

Nandewar Ranges

Cheers & Happy Birding

BLUE MOUNTAINS AND BEYOND

After leaving the Capertee Valley we headed to Lithgow, to use as a base for exploring the iconic Blue Mountains. Having never visited the area before and thinking it was a bit of a tourist trap and probably over rated, we were blown away by the stunning vistas and sheer size of  this virtually untouched wilderness on Sydney's doorstep.  

Grose Valley

The weather was perfect on our one and only day of exploring. The next three days it turned nasty with a wet, cold, windy change coming through, apparently not unusual in these parts. There was a plethora of walking tracks to choose from and with our limited time we settled for a couple of the shorter ones and even these were quite steep in parts. The bird life wasn't prolific but one of the more colourful ones caught my eye.

Crimson Rosella

The wildflowers were actually more conspicuous than the birds and with the aid of this very helpful website:  http://www.waratahsoftware.com.au/wp_flora_bluemountains.html  I was able to identify some of the specimens I photographed.

Trigger Plant

Mountain Devil

??????

The Blue Mountains is another one of those places that has to be seen to be believed and pictures do not do it justice. A good week here would probably just scratch the surface.

Three Sisters

The weather finally improved on our way to Canberra and driving through the countryside one of the most common birds was the Nankeen Kestrel. I was able to pull up and get a quick shot of this male before he took off to do what they normally do, hover above the paddocks in search of prey.

Nankeen Kestrel

While in Canberra we visited the Australian National Botanic Gardens, a must see for anyone even remotely interested in plants. I could have sworn I was back in Queensland when we walked through the huge rainforest gully section. I was waiting for a Pitta to bounce out across the pathway! 

How they have created this habitat in a climate of extremes defies the imagination.  

"Fir0002/Flagstaffotos".

Rainforest Walk - ANBG 

This juvenile Water Dragon was sunning itself on a rock along the walk.

Eastern Water Dragon

And a Raven was eyeing off our picnic lunch.

Australian Raven

One of the more common plants were these pretty flowers along another of the many walks through the gardens.

Christmas Bells

There was also a single young Wollemi Pine, a critically endangered species with less than one hundred trees growing in the wild not far from the Capertee Valley, in Wollemi National Park. It's a wonder they didn't have an armed guard keeping an eye on this one!

Wollemi Pine