A few weeks ago Dave and I went for the hike around the Bayards Road Wetlands (otherwise and more prosaically known as the "Reynella East stormwater catchment area"), with the idea of perhaps seeing and photographing some birds ... and when we arrived, the ponds were bone dry and cracked! We were making jibes about "Sub-Saharan Africa," on some of the cracked-mud shots. We've waited a long time for decent rains to get here -- but they did at last! And this is the result.
Most of the ponds are brimming; one is low and one is empty, held in reserve. This really is a stormwater catchment area -- only seven years old, not a natural lake, though you might not believe it. Walking here, you can lose sight of the surrounding suburb, see no hint of houses or school or road, but in fact you're never more than a few hundred meters away from that road and school. The water flow here is controlled -- but the birds and frogs don't mind a bit.
Today, the cormorants are back, which tells you there's something to fish for. Frogs are croaking enthusiastically; several kinds of parrots have settled in the area, and the waterfowl are in their element. I managed to get good shots of a pied cormorant, an Australian white ibis, Eurasian coots, Pacific Black ducks --
The last two pictures, today, are purely for interest. The flock of yellow tailed black cockatoos went overhead, but they *don't* photograph well at a distance: they're BLACK, against a bright sky, LOL. And the last photo of all isn't actually a good photo (the bird was too far away, even for this camera and its Leica zoom), but I'm including it because you so rarely see this bird. It's an Australasian Grebe. There were three on one pond, that I saw. Next time, they might be closer to shore, and I might be able to get better images. So --
Bayards Wetlands with water (!), and a few of the birds making their home among the reed beds...
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