This morning I had some free time, and my wife took Scully to work so I could use the opportunity to travel somewhere where dogs aren’t allowed. I decided to hop on the Metro and take a train to Lane Cove National Park.
This is a tiny national park entirely within the metropolitan area of Sydney. In fact, I only had to ride the train two stops to get there. It follows the banks of the Lane Cove River, one of the tributaries of Sydney Harbour. I know the main entrance area and thought I could walk there down the main road from the train station, but about half way there the road narrowed and the footpath disappeared, and there was no way I could continue without risking being hit by cars, so I had to backtrack and use an alternative route into the park.
But once there, I was greeted by the river, with forested banks on either side.
I’d taken my dSLR camera with a 100-400m lens for shooting birds. I wasn’t disappointed. There were many around, and some fearless. Here’s a suplhur-crested cockatoo:
This Australian brushturkey came right up to me. I took this photo with my phone, not the SLR.
An Australasian darter:
Australian golden whistler:
And I think the photo of the day, a superb fairywren:
I also got photos of a white-throated treecreeper and a brown gerygone, two species I’ve never photographed before, which was good, but unfortunately both photos were a bit blurry and far away, so not really worth showing off. These little birds move so fast it’s ridiculously hard getting a camera aimed at them before they move.
I emerged from another part of the park and walked to a different station to get a train back. I actually stopped on the way to the station to get lunch at a Thai place – the same premises where I used to get lunch when I was working for Canon, but they’ve changed owners and name and now the food is different. But still pretty good.
Here’s a map of the walk, as recorded on Strava.
New content today: