Trip to Australia – June and July 2016

[Chlidonias]

We started to walk around Herschel Lake, and it wasn’t long before I found a particularly interesting bird and one that I had been wanted to see for a long time, and it was a small group of White-fronted Chats.

I saw several around here hopping about by the shore of the lake and perching on the low vegetation, and they were really cool little birds, particularly the boldly coloured males.

White-fronted Chats are neat birds. A really interesting thing with the Australian chats (and I figure you already know this, but for others, and why I left the photo in the quote) is that they are actually aberrant honeyeaters. Just bizarre.

While I was looking at the Quokka and the birds and things, my family had gone up ahead and from a few hundred metres away they called out 'there’s a lizard!' I rushed ahead to see what it was and this lizard had apparently moved into the bushes a bit, but from the movement of the vegetation I was able to find it, and it turned out to be a very large King’s Skink. The first reptile of the day. There is a variety of herps found on Rottnest including geckos, legless lizards, frogs, snakes, skinks, etc. and I was particularly hoping to see Dugite and Bobtail, both of which have subspecies endemic to Rottnest. King’s Skink was an excellent start though, as that was a species I had not seen before.

King's Skinks are awesome! I was amazed how big they were when I saw my first ones. I didn't see any Dugites either.

I was somewhat more successful on the wader front as I spotted four species around here which were Red-capped Plovers, Pied Stilts, Banded Stilts, and Australian Pied Oystercatcher. I only saw a couple of individuals of each though and didn’t see the 'rafts' of stilts that are described as being visible here. The waders that I was particularly hoping to see but missed were Sooty Osyercather, Banded Lapwing, and Australian Avocet. Any of those would have been a lifer, and they are all supposed to be common on Rottnest but oh well.

I missed avocets also. Still haven't seen them! A friend of mine went to Rottnest and got photos of rafts of "Banded Stilts" - showed them to me and I said "those are avocets..."

So I headed north from the main settlement walking right on the beach/cliff edge and I wasn’t too far out of the settlement when I saw a Rock Parrot! I was walking along a narrow path along a beach with tall grass along either side, and suddenly an olive-green bird shot up out of the grass and flew above the grass at about my head height for about fifty metres before dropping back down into the grass again. Luckily I happened to be looking right where the parrot took off from so I was able to follow it for the duration of its flight and I got a rather good look at it. I was extremely pleased with that sighting because the Rock Parrot was probably top on my list of birds that I wanted to see on Rottnest.

and I couldn't find any Rock Parrots either, so well done on that.

 

[Pertinax]

I forgot to ask- without trawling the whole thead- did you see Beach (not Bush) Stone Curlew anywhere?

 

[LaughingDove]

I forgot to ask- without trawling the whole thead- did you see Beach (not Bush) Stone Curlew anywhere?

I did not, sadly. Bush Stone-curlew was seen wild at three locations and captive at lots of places, but no Beach Stone-curlews anywhere on this trip.

 

[animal_expert01]

the Peel Zoo is involved with "saving" other zoos (notably the Bali Zoo - apparently others, I don't know the details) but it seems to me, reading your review and looking at the photos, that they have a pretty average zoo to begin with themselves. That might sound harsh, but it doesn't seem to be doing much for itself.

The signage thing really irks me though, it's like just giving a middle finger to the visitors. "Here's a list of names, what more do you need? You want to know something about the animals? Too bad. We can't be bothered providing that."

I had a look on their website too, and it is the same - just a list of names and then a QR code for a "fact sheet". (Honest question - why would you set up your website so that people coming onto it to find information had to then scan a code to get that information on their phone? Is that how that works? I don't get it. Surely it makes more sense to have the information right there on the page to begin with?).

Bali zoo /peel zoo