LaughingDove Goes Travelling - SE Asia and Australia

The restaurant is tucked away at a corner on the top level of the Open Ocean gallery. You won't really notice it unless you're actively looking for it

 

A Rat's Nest

I've been quiet for the last few days since the one Perth post a few days ago but I've done no real birding since then and have just been resting with family. The extended family who live in Perth as well as my brother and parents who have also been here. My brother and parents got to Perth when I was in Darwin so have spent quite a while here, and they have strange responsibilities like going back to work before the end of the month and my brother has to go back to school. School, imagine that. I don't do that sort of stuff anymore.

So my parents and brother are flying back to Europe today, with their flight this evening, so this morning I got them to drop me off at the Fremantle Jetty before they go to go on a trip to Rottnest Island. Rottnest is the island that is know for its Quokkas and it's good for birding as well. I've been to Rottnest a couple of times in the past, with my visit two years ago being for proper birding, but I really like the place and this time I'm doing something that I've not done before and really wanted to, so I'm spending the night this time. I'm just spending one night, but I'm getting a morning boat then an evening boat so two full days which I think is plenty to thoroughly explore the island. There are expensive luxury chalets on the island, which I'm not staying at of course, but there's a dorm too where I'm staying with a dorm bed for $50 Australian per night. (A bit more than €30 or a bit less than £30). That's very expensive for a night in a dorm, but it is Australia and there's obviously a limited market of accommodation on Rottnest Island. There is a camp ground which is actually the cheapest accommodation on the island, but you'd need your own equipment and tent and such.

Just for reference, the return ferry between Perth and Rottnest is $75 Australian so given that cost of a day trip, a one night two day stay seemed like by far the best option. The ferry across was a bit choppy due to being a slightly windy morning, but it's a big boat so it wasn't very rocky. The boat is quite good for spotting pelagic seabirds and I saw a could of interesting species. You can't miss the quokkas on Rottnest, if you were blind I imagine you'd trip over one so I saw those as soon as I do off the boat.

I decided that today it was worth getting a $20 hop-on-hop-off bus ticket to go some of the further parts of the islands so I got the bus to visit the seal view point on the far side of the island. The island is a decent side with the Eastern (inland) side of the island being where all the facilities are as well as being the much larger, wider side with the remnant forest and lakes which is where the good birding is. This was the only part of the island I had done in the past.

Going away from the wide, Eastern side of the island out to sea in the West the island is about 13km long and only about 200m wide covered entirely in heath. I hadn't been down here before on my day trips since I had to focus on birding, but with two days I got the bus to look at the sea lion colony at Cathedral Rocks which I had wanted to see. There were about a hundred sea lions, mostly New Zealand Fur Seals on the rocks and in the water but also a couple for Australian Sea Lions hauled out. The Fur Seals were a lifer so that's cool.

There were lots of seabirds too, terns and gannets and things, and some proper pelagics too, although they are mostly too far out to identify without a scope. Nice view of the ocean and the bare heathland. No sign of cetaceans though although dolphins apparently like surfing the massive breakers at the far Western point. The area here also had a few burrows of breedomg Wedge-tailed Shearwaters which was on of the species I identified at sea

The buses do a loop around the island that takes about an hour and they come every half hou so it's a good way to get around and by doing a full loop at the start of the visit, I could get a good first look at everything. The other option is to hire a bike but I didn't fancy that with all my gear. I spent an hour and a half at West Point then got the bus back, by which point I could check into the dorm.

On the bus going back on one of the lakes, I noticed that one side had hundreds of banded stilts which was great since on my previous visit there were only one or two rather than 'rafts'. The dorm accommodation is 1.8kn away from the main settlement in Kingstown Barracks and the dorms are a row of 12 bed dorms that were the old army barracks. You have to pay extra for linen but I knew this so brought a sleeping bag. There was one other person staying in the dorm I was in, which is more than I had expected really although two people in a 12 bed dorm is hardly crowded.

I then went out to get some food where the biggest challenge was not getting food, but keeping it since I bought a pizza from a small shop to eat outside and I was instantly mobbed by gulls and ravens as well as a couple of quokkas on the ground hoping to charm their way into getting food by sitting on my bag and poking my legs with their noses. The gulls however, went with a considerably more aggressive method and one gull actually flew at me and grabbed half a piece of pizza out of my hand which is quite amusing, but did mean I had to move because as soon as one gull got some food, hundreds of other immidiately descended.

I went for a walk around the lakes in the afternoon looking for birds of course and I found most of the key Rottnest birds but not the Rock Parrot or Banded Lapwing and I couldn't refind the raft of banded stilts that I had seen from the bus. The most distinctive Rottnest bird for me must be the White-fronted Chat since they're such cool birds which are common on Rottnest but I've never seen anywhere else and they're actually a species in the honeyeater family!

Around sunset, I got a really cool sighting as I was walking along a coastal path looking for Rock Parrots when I saw a group of three Bottlenosed Dolphins feeding on the reef just below me surfacing and going back down for about ten minutes just of the coast right where I was watching which was really cool.

Rottnest Island becomes extremely quiet after the last ferry leaves at 4:30 and at dusk hundreds of quokkas all start to come out. The settlement has a few tame quokkas during the day, but after all the people have gone the central area just fills up with quokkas. The only other "land" mammal on Rottnest also comes out at this time which are a few White-striped Freetail Bats that live around the settlement. It's worth noting that this bat is a species with audible echolocation sonar (and the only one with audible sonar that occurs in the area).

I walked back to the hostel in the dark and there were lots of quokkas everywhere, but there isn't really anything to spotlight on the island. I thought there might possibly be owls around, most likely would be boobooks, but I couldn't hear any so I don't know if they occur on the island. I established in Darwin that they don't exist anyway. Apart from the seven species that I've seen + several heard so far on this trip of course.

It's quite nice staying on the island and I think worth the relatively expensive dorm, especially given the ferry cost anyway. Although I don't know how they'd cope if all three 12-bed dorms were full with a single shower. With two people that's not a problem of course.

(I'll do a new birds/mammals list for the whole Rottnest trip in tomorrow's post)

 

I've read in several reports that the tennis court area is supposed to be good for Rock Parrots.

 

I briefly popped there this evening and will try properly tomorrow. I managed to find Rock Parrots when I visited two years ago when I accidentally flushed one from the vegetation on the beach near the main settlement going towards the tennis court side.

Unfortunately I've heard that Rock Parrots have been in decline on Rottnest for a while and now may no longer be a viable population on the island which would be a shame.

 

Wandering Rottnest

I, naturally, woke up early to make the most of being on Rottnest as soon as I wake up. It would probably be quite nice to spend an extended period of time on Rottnest because although the accommodation is relatively expensive, you can bring across basically as much stuff as you like and there is a full kitchen.

After dropping of my key, I headed out for the day's birding to thoroughly bird the Western side of the island and the mixture of rocky coastline, lakes, and heath with patches of remnant woodland. A surprising bird sighting was a Sacred Kingfisher which I wasn't expecting because they mainly migrate North at this time of year. Although the lakes were extremely full and just about bursting their banks with the unusually large amount of rain over the last few weeks, I was able to locate a mixture of waders around some of the shallower edges and sandbanks that would normally be above water.

The island in the early morning is really peaceful and quiet and the views are just absolutely stunning over the island and over the ocean. You definitely get a lot more out of the island by spending the night and just one night gives you about three times as long on the island so I didn't have to rush to cover the area as I have done on day trips. There were lots of King Skinks around today, and weirdly these were my first herps on Rottnest where normally they would be common but it has been cold recently. Today was much warmer than previous days though, and although the island is windswept on parts, it actually feels warmer than the mainland. The sun came out in the late morning too, making the scenery particularly impressive. I know most people think of Australia as hot and sunny, but it is winter now and Perth is quite far to the South. Today was the first day in Perth where I could comfortably walk around in short sleeves. Of course, having my chamoflage shirt exposed is what made all the difference with finding birds

Two rather good lifers were a Banded Lapwing and. Red-headed Avocet. The avocet in particular was especially striking sitting by the side of a lake with a mixed group of the two stilt species. I also relocated the big raft of Banded Stilts that I had seen from the bus yesterday and there was a vast mass of several hundred of them on Lake Baghdad which was cool. They are more striking looking than the common Black-winged Stilt that you can see easily on the mainland. There were no stilt rafts when I visited Rottnest last time (or at least, I didn't find them) so it was nice to see one on this visit with a very large number of birds.

My loop around the lakes and coast took all morning and the early afternoon and at lunch I was entertained by a quokka actually climbing up onto my table via the chair opposite once it realised that poking at my legs was not going to get it any food dropped down.

I didn't have long after lunch because the last boats leave at 4:30 so I went to have another check of the nearby rock parrot sites before going back to the dorm to pick up my stuff from the locker. I didn't find any Rock Parrots but I've seen pretty much everything else, and because I saw Rock Parrots on my last visit I feel like I've done Rottnest properly and thoroughly now and two full days on the island gives you long enough to get a proper look at everything. It is a really cool place and just a 30 minute boat ride from Fremantle Port too.

The last few weeks of going everywhere by car means I'm not as used to walking as I was at the end of my time in Malaysia. About 15kms yesterday and probably just over 20kms today on mostly flat land had really tired me out while that would have been normal even with gradients at the end of my time in Malaysia. I got the shuttle bus back though after picking up my stuff from the dorm to save the 1.8kms. This is a free shuttle service for those staying at the two accommodation areas away form the main settlement at Geordie Bay to the North and Kingstown Barracks to the South and it goes every hour so it's frequent enough if you happen to get the right time or are opposed to the walk, but otherwise the walk is about 20 mins if you don't stop.

I got the ferry off the island at 4:30 and instead of going to Fremantle Port where I started from, I went to the Barrack Street Jetty in Perth City instead. This is a fair bit further up the river estuary and normally is more expensive but when I booked was the same price. I did this because I was making my own way upon arrival rather than with a car as I was dropped off and from Perth City I would have a chance at getting a bus and would also be within a reasonable Uber distance if the wait for the bus was too long which I thought could well be the case given how very infrequently buses run out to the Perth suburbs.

The most interesting seabirds from the ferry back were gannet, including one diving. Also of note was a distant whale sighting which was probably a Humpback because that's most common but Southern Right is also a possibility. The ferry stopped at Fremantle first and then continued up the river to Perth City where I was getting off. This passed the container port and then the city centre at twilight which was really interesting and an enjoyable further part of the journey which I'd not done before, always getting the ferry from Fremantle.
The cruise up the river from Fremantle to Perth was actually longer than the journey from Rottnest to Fremantle (because the boat was going much slower) and it was a very nice relaxing journey that's worth doing, especially since I didn't have to pay any more for the ticket.

The boat got into Fremantle at 5 and was scheduled to get into Barrack Street Jetty at 6 but got in five minutes late. This was slightly worrying because the bus I needed to catch left at 6:15 and a check of Google maps as we were pulling up showed that we had docked at the far side of the jetty from the bus station. I just about made it to the bus station with five minutes to spare and was greeted by a huge bus interchange with airport-style sign boards and escalators up to the central hall and then down to the bus area at lettered and numbered gates. All very flash. Also, all very time consuming to get through. I ran into the station, found the gate, and made it down just as the bus pulled away. I saw the bloody thing pull away, ten seconds and I'd have made it. Because this was Australia, their idea of a frequent city bus service is one every hour and a half with the last bus of the day at 7:45. This is very different to my idea of a frequent city to suburb commuter bus service. I'd be annoyed at the wait if an equivalent Warsaw bus was every twenty minutes until about midnight. No wonder everyone commutes by car. The issue of course is that since the buses are so useless, everyone commutes by car but since everyone commutes by car, there isn't enough demand for buses. I guess that even though I don't think much of the bus system, it's probably still government subsidised and one of the better ones in Australia.

So having just missed my bus and not being keen on waiting an hour and a half, I checked the other bus destinations and the next best had a bus departing in 15 minutes and from a stop along that bus route where I knew roughly where to get off to be closest, I could get an Uber for $11. For comparison, getting an Uber direct was $45. The most penny-pinching option would be to wait an hour and a half for the next bus direct, and the easiest but a bit money-wasteful would be a direct Uber so the intermediate option seemed by far the best bet.

Conveniently, in Perth you still buy tickets from the driver, unlike London which is now contactless card only, or Warsaw where you have to faff about with ticket machines. I'm aware that this must seem remarkably unadventurous. I wasn't mugged, I didn't wave down a bus by the side of the road in the middle of the rainforest, I didn't arrive at a strange mountain at midnight, I didn't have a five hour wait in a mysterious bus station with all my luggage waiting for the next bus that would probably be already full. But all this travel in Australia has been so chill, I've got to pad out my blog with some kind of transportation misadventure. Or rather, fill several paragraphs about catching a slightly different bus to the one I had originally intended. I hadn't eaten since lunch either. Diddums. (In case it's not obvious enough, I'm being 100% ironic, I'm not seriously feeling sorry for myself in the slightest. I got back before 8 anyway.)

It was a great trip to Rottnest though, and I'm very happy that I decided to stay the night which was an extremely enjoyable and relaxing experience.


New Birds (both days):

Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross

Little Shearwater

Australasian Gannet

White-fronted Chat

Wedge-tailed Shearwater

Banded Stilt

White-browed (Spotted) Scrubwren

Red-capped Robin

Sooty Oystercatcher

Red-necked Avocet

Banded Lapwing


Mammals:

Quokka

New Zealand Fur Seal

Australian Sea Lion

White-striped Freetail Bat

 

Some nice animals from Rottnest! How common are Quokkas? Are they like squirrels in the fact that they are everywhere, or are they a bit harder to find?

 

They're extremely common in the settlement area around people since they look for scraps. If you were blind you'd still find one because you'd trip over one, in fact I almost did when one popped up behind me that I wasn't expecting. Outside of the settlement they're a little bit harder to find because they sleep during the day, but they can normally be located sleeping under bushes. At night they're everywhere.

Squirrels are the wrong analogy though, not just because they're not found in Australia but also because they're nothing like squirrels. Well, maybe you might compare them to a large ground squirrel like a marmot or woodchuck crossed with a wallaby maybe.

Also a note: I'm in Dryandra Woodland at the moment and have been since yesterday. I've not got phone signal anywhere convenient so haven't posted, but expect two blog posts tomorrow afternoon/evening before my flight to Singapore tomorrow night.

 

To Dryandra!

Before I start the Dryandra day today, I'll briefly talk about yesterday which was very interesting, but probably best included with this post rather than on its own post.

During the afternoon, I visited some parks in the Perth city and saw a number of birds that are really cool and unusual for Perth but not new for the year including Gilbert's Honeyeater, and Little Eagle. Also particularly exciting, and a lifer, was a Baillon's Crake. I assumed it was a Buff-banded Rail at first which I have seen in wetlands in Perth city before, but it was actually a Baillon's which is cool.

Also in the city, in the evening I went spotlighting in King's Park which was very cool with Southern Brown Bandicoots, rabbits, a Common Brushtail Possum and, most excitingly, a Tawny Frogmouth which was only my second ever sighting and this one was perched low on a visitor sign and sat there letting me go right up to it while it stared at me with bright orange eyes. Really cool.

This morning, I headed off to Dryandra Woodlands to spend two nights there to come back on the day of my evening flight to Singapore. I'm staying in the Lions Village in the middle of the woodland itself, and I'm travelling with an aunt and uncle who live in Perth who have taken me down for the weekend.

There were a few interesting birds seen from the drive, but by far the most exciting was my first ever wild Emu. This is on par with the Tawny Frogmouth that was a lifer in Darwin as a super-long-awaited lifer that I had just never seen in the wild before. This one was in a light woodland and was definitely wild, unlike the occasional ob that I've seen in fields that seem to be kept as farmed, though I wonder if these are occasionally wild birds. I'm happy to put it on the list now anyway, finally.

We got to Dryandra Village in the late morning and then went for a walk to see what wildlife could be found. Obviously the numbats are the big thing, but they're quite rarely seen. They are seen occasionally though. Much more common are echidnas, of which I found one, and there are lots of cool birds like Rufous Treecrepers and Purple-crowned Lorikeets too. There were also some different honeyeaters to those I normally see in the Perth city and suburbs. Although there are lots of very cool birds that are easily seen, some like the Malleefowl and Shrike-tit are much more difficult to find and I haven't found them as of yet.

The Dryandra Village is a very nice location with a lawn that's covered in grazing kangaroos and at night, Common Brushtail Possums and it's right in the woodland itself.

After an afternoon walk, we went to visit the Barna Mia animal enclosure. This is a four-hectare enclosed area with a predator-proof fence that holds six species of small nocturnal mammals. Two of which can be found wild and Dryandra Woodlands and four of the which were formerly found here and are now extinct. The former are the Southern Brown Bandicoot and Brush-tailed Bettong and the latter are Bilby, Rufous Hare-wallaby, Western Barred-bandicoot, and Burrowing Bettong. It's $20 per person to do the night walk, and it involves going to each of three feeding stations where pellets and fruit are put out to entice the animals in. These are captive animals of course, and there are only about 25 individuals in the enclosure which are fully managed, but they are species that you'd never see outside an enclosure and are really cool. We saw all of them except the two bandicoots. The Western Barred is quite difficult to see and is rarely seen, but I did see one when I visited Barna Mia 6 years ago.

As well as the expected animals, there was also a large Brushtail Possum that was not supposed to be in the enclosure and it was gorging itself on the pellets. Possums are really common throughout Dryandra, I even saw a mother with a baby on its back which was cool.

Later that evening, I went spotlighting for a few hours from the accommodation at Dryandra Village going up and back down the Lol Gray Trail a bit and along the road and up what was probably a fire break. Kangaroos and Brushtail Possums were absolutely everywhere, and the night was very productive for spotlighting, although it took a few hours for stuff to start coming out. There are a lot of target night mammals at Dryandra that I would really like to see, though I thought they might all be very difficult so I'm pleased to have seen a few. I managed to get a brief view of a Brush-tailed Bettong which is one of the species in Barna Mia that is also found in the woodland. At one point, they were extremely common and could be seen easily, but their population has crashed recently and they are now much harder to find, but still about, clearly. The two wallaby species - Brush and Tammar - I believe are also in the situation and used to be common but are now much scarcer and I didn't find any that night. I also got a very brief view of a Brush-tailed Phascogale which bolted from the torchlight (which seems to be the normal behaviour. Maybe this is a case where a red filter would have helped?) so I didn't really get to watch it. It's borderline of the sort of sighting that you can count or not, but my policy is that if I've seen an animal well enough to be certain of the identification, I count it.

And finally, crossing the path in front of me so I got a good look, but disappearing into the undergrowth on the other side too quickly to get a picture under night conditions without the flash was a wonderful Western Quoll which I was super happy to see. For some reason, I had the impression that I was supposed to mainly be looking in trees for quolls but it seems they are usually terrestrial. I'm particularly happy with that sighting as my first wild quoll and Western Quolls are quite widespread, not having had to deal with Cane Toads like Northern species, but generally not that often seen. Although the Barna Mia guide did say they could quite often be seen driving home at night.

So spotlighting was good, but a bit chilly. It will definitely drop below freezing at night.

(Written on the day but not posted due to being completely out of phone reception)

 

Are you sure that the Phascogale was a Brushtail and not a Redtail?

 

No that should be redtail, I just wrote the wrong name in the blog post. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

In Search of a Numbat

The top target for my one full day in Dryandra was of course to find a Numbat which is the top mammal target from here. They are active during the warmest part of the day and patrol a very large 50 hectare home range looking for termites so the way to try and find them is to cover as much ground as possible in the heat of the day.

There wasn't much heat in the morning at least though as the ground was covered in frost with kangaroos hopping over a frosty lawn. It did warm up a bit though later in the day and apparently peak Numbat activity is from 10-4. In the morning we did a trail where numbats are occasionally seen and the relatives who I'm travelling with in dryandra saw a Numbat about 15 years ago, and although there were lots of cool birds, nice scenery, and plenty of dead logs and termite mounds, no numbats were seen. There was an old Malleefowl mound here too, although probably long abandoned by the bird, and Dryandra is a place where they can be found but are tricky to see and are almost as tricky as the numbats.

We then did what the Barna Mia guide suggested as the best chance at numbats which was the Darwinia Drive Trail which is a driving route that covers a large area of the woodland passing through numbat habitat and driving slowly around is the best chance to see a numbat run across the road or be foraging on the side of the road since you can cover much more ground in a car. This is important because of the 50 ha home range of a numbat. There's still a heck of a lot of chance involved in finding a Numbat though, and although I seem to be quite lucky with wildlife a lot of the time, I wasn't on this occasion. There was lots of other cool stuff around too like fairy-wrens, a huge Wedge-tailed Eagle perched over a dead kangroo and lots of Jacky Winters doing their characteristic tail-wagging all along the fence line that separates Dryandra Woodland from the neighbouring farmland. Dryandra Woodland is a relatively small patch of remnant woodland in the Western Australian Wheatbelt where most of the land has been cleared for agriculture. Surprisingly, there were no echidnas seen all day either, unlike yesterday where there were a few about.

After lunch, I walked around the woodlands near the village again and as well as the cool birds that I had seen already like Rufous Treecrepers and Yellow Robins, found a White-browed Babbler which is a very cool bird that is apparently becoming more difficult to find in Dryandra than in the past. I found an echidna in the late afternoon too. I'm surprised I hadn't seen one earlier until this one waddling along in that distinctive way as echidnas are wont to do.

After dinner, went for a bit of spotlighting of course doing a trail from the Old Mill Dam as well as doing more of the Lol Gray Trail a bit later. The trail from the Old Mill Dam was interesting because it was designed as a night walk as a loop with reflective patches on signs and on the trees on the way around so that you could easily follow it by torchlight. Prior to the Dryandra population crash, I believe Brush-tailed Bettongs were commonly seen, but they aren't any more and I didn't see any. I did, however see lots of roos, some Brushtail Possums, and near the car park by the side of the road was a Boobook Owl, one of two seen, which is very nice because it moves the species from the heard-only category of the trip list onto the list proper. Counting off the top of my head, that's the eighth owl species seen on the trip with a few more heard (+ two frogmouths seen and two more heard). Not bad for a taxon that doesn't exist.

On the Lol Gray Trail at night, as well as possums and roos and being freaked out by something that so sounded like a bipedal-walk that seemed like it could only be a human or yeti or bigfoot (the two things I hate meeting at night are humans and domestic dogs. Bigfoot or yetis are ok, just not dogs), there were a couple of interesting sightings over a few hours. There was a probably phascogale that ran off too quickly to be certain, but I'm quite sure this was a phascogale after having had the brief view yesterday. There was also what seemed to be a Southern Brown Bandicoot running off. Considering how easily they are found in the Perth suburbs, I'm surprised that I haven't really seen any apart from a probably flash of one. I also found lots of flowering plants that looked very promising for Western Pygmy Possum and Honey Possum but was unsuccessful with both. There were a few bats around too, which I wasn't expecting given none seen yesterday. One bat that I could actually identify was a Freetail bat that wasn't White-striped so must be South-Western. The haunting call of the Bush Stone-curlew continued throughout the night too, although common on the East Coast, I have never seen them and only today and last night heard them on the West.

We had to leave reasonably early the next morning because I was getting my flight to Singapore the same evening. There were no particularly interesting or different sightings on the drive out, no numbat running across the road or anything. So I didn’t find the numbat, nor did I find a malleefowl or pygmy-possums, but I saw the vast of majority of species I was looking for so I’m extremely pleased with that and I got a lot of lifers.

On return to Perth, I had a few hours for lunch and to pack my stuff for the rest of the trip. I also sent off a box of stuff by sea post to go back to Poland so that I wouldn’t have to carry it. I sent 7.5kgs of stuff including warm clothes that I wouldn’t need anymore, field guides for regions that I was now done with (Australia and Borneo) and a fair amount of stuff that I had with me in Malaysia but now having done that travel realise aren’t actually completely essential and aren’t worth carrying. So I’ve got quite a bit less stuff now which is good.

My flight to Singapore leaves this evening so I’ll have to start getting ready to go to the airport shortly. Of course I land at an annoyingly late time which I’d really rather not do, but there’s nothing that I can do to help that, that’s when the cheap flight was. I’ll probably get to my accommodation around 1AM but that can’t be helped.


New birds:

Variegated Fairy-wren

Baillon’s Crake

Western Rosella

Emu

Baudin’s Black Cockatoo

White-backed Swallow

Western Corella

Yellow-plumed Honeyeater

Inland Thornbill

White-eared Honeyeater

Blue-breasted Fairy-wren

Rufous Treecreeper

Purple-crowned Lorikeet

Tawny-crowned Honeyeater

Jacky Winter

Varied Sittella

Brush Bronzewing

White-browed Babbler

Pallid Cuckoo

Southern Boobook


Mammals:

Brush-tailed Bettong

Red-tailed Phascogale


In Search of a Numbat

The top target for my one full day in Dryandra was of course to find a Numbat which is the top mammal target from here. They are active during the warmest part of the day and patrol a very large 50 hectare home range looking for termites so the way to try and find them is to cover as much ground as possible in the heat of the day.

There wasn't much heat in the morning at least though as the ground was covered in frost with kangaroos hopping over a frosty lawn. It did warm up a bit though later in the day and apparently peak Numbat activity is from 10-4. In the morning we did a trail where numbats are occasionally seen and the relatives who I'm travelling with in dryandra saw a Numbat about 15 years ago, and although there were lots of cool birds, nice scenery, and plenty of dead logs and termite mounds, no numbats were seen. There was an old Malleefowl mound here too, although probably long abandoned by the bird, and Dryandra is a place where they can be found but are tricky to see and are almost as tricky as the numbats.

We then did what the Barna Mia guide suggested as the best chance at numbats which was the Darwinia Drive Trail which is a driving route that covers a large area of the woodland passing through numbat habitat and driving slowly around is the best chance to see a numbat run across the road or be foraging on the side of the road since you can cover much more ground in a car. This is important because of the 50 ha home range of a numbat. There's still a heck of a lot of chance involved in finding a Numbat though, and although I seem to be quite lucky with wildlife a lot of the time, I wasn't on this occasion. There was lots of other cool stuff around too like fairy-wrens, a huge Wedge-tailed Eagle perched over a dead kangroo and lots of Jacky Winters doing their characteristic tail-wagging all along the fence line that separates Dryandra Woodland from the neighbouring farmland. Dryandra Woodland is a relatively small patch of remnant woodland in the Western Australian Wheatbelt where most of the land has been cleared for agriculture. Surprisingly, there were no echidnas seen all day either, unlike yesterday where there were a few about.

After lunch, I walked around the woodlands near the village again and as well as the cool birds that I had seen already like Rufous Treecrepers and Yellow Robins, found a White-browed Babbler which is a very cool bird that is apparently becoming more difficult to find in Dryandra than in the past. I found an echidna in the late afternoon too. I'm surprised I hadn't seen one earlier until this one waddling along in that distinctive way as echidnas are wont to do.

After dinner, went for a bit of spotlighting of course doing a trail from the Old Mill Dam as well as doing more of the Lol Gray Trail a bit later. The trail from the Old Mill Dam was interesting because it was designed as a night walk as a loop with reflective patches on signs and on the trees on the way around so that you could easily follow it by torchlight. Prior to the Dryandra population crash, I believe Brush-tailed Bettongs were commonly seen, but they aren't any more and I didn't see any. I did, however see lots of roos, some Brushtail Possums, and near the car park by the side of the road was a Boobook Owl, one of two seen, which is very nice because it moves the species from the heard-only category of the trip list onto the list proper. Counting off the top of my head, that's the eighth owl species seen on the trip with a few more heard (+ two frogmouths seen and two more heard). Not bad for a taxon that doesn't exist.

On the Lol Gray Trail at night, as well as possums and roos and being freaked out by something that so sounded like a bipedal-walk that seemed like it could only be a human or yeti or bigfoot (the two things I hate meeting at night are humans and domestic dogs. Bigfoot or yetis are ok, just not dogs), there were a couple of interesting sightings over a few hours. There was a probably phascogale that ran off too quickly to be certain, but I'm quite sure this was a phascogale after having had the brief view yesterday. There was also what seemed to be a Southern Brown Bandicoot running off. Considering how easily they are found in the Perth suburbs, I'm surprised that I haven't really seen any apart from a probably flash of one. I also found lots of flowering plants that looked very promising for Western Pygmy Possum and Honey Possum but was unsuccessful with both. There were a few bats around too, which I wasn't expecting given none seen yesterday. One bat that I could actually identify was a Freetail bat that wasn't White-striped so must be South-Western. The haunting call of the Bush Stone-curlew continued throughout the night too, although common on the East Coast, I have never seen them and only today and last night heard them on the West.

We had to leave reasonably early the next morning because I was getting my flight to Singapore the same evening. There were no particularly interesting or different sightings on the drive out, no numbat running across the road or anything. So I didn’t find the numbat, nor did I find a malleefowl or pygmy-possums, but I saw the vast of majority of species I was looking for so I’m extremely pleased with that and I got a lot of lifers.

On return to Perth, I had a few hours for lunch and to pack my stuff for the rest of the trip. I also sent off a box of stuff by sea post to go back to Poland so that I wouldn’t have to carry it. I sent 7.5kgs of stuff including warm clothes that I wouldn’t need anymore, field guides for regions that I was now done with (Australia and Borneo) and a fair amount of stuff that I had with me in Malaysia but now having done that travel realise aren’t actually completely essential and aren’t worth carrying. So I’ve got quite a bit less stuff now which is good.

My flight to Singapore leaves this evening so I’ll have to start getting ready to go to the airport shortly. Of course I land at an annoyingly late time which I’d really rather not do, but there’s nothing that I can do to help that, that’s when the cheap flight was. I’ll probably get to my accommodation around 1AM but that can’t be helped.


New birds:

Variegated Fairy-wren

Baillon’s Crake

Western Rosella

Emu

Baudin’s Black Cockatoo

White-backed Swallow

Western Corella

Yellow-plumed Honeyeater

Inland Thornbill

White-eared Honeyeater

Blue-breasted Fairy-wren

Rufous Treecreeper

Purple-crowned Lorikeet

Tawny-crowned Honeyeater

Jacky Winter

Varied Sittella

Brush Bronzewing

White-browed Babbler

Pallid Cuckoo

Southern Boobook


Mammals:

Brush-tailed Bettong

Red-tailed Phascogale

Western Quoll

South-western Freetail Bat

 

Yes, no torchlight so it must have been a Yowie. Not sure if Yowies are nocturnal, but most Australian animals are so it probably is. Shame I didn't see it, because that would have been a lifer. No eyeshine either which would match a primate.

 

@LaughingDove, I just want to say I thoroughly enjoy this thread! Reading the adventures of a great wildlife trip like this makes me want to go on such a trip myself. Thanks for sharing everything with us. I wasn't able to keep up so I still got lots of reading to do, which is also why I haven't liked any of your stories recently. You can see this reply as a huge "like" for everything you wrote this thread.

 

Scooting to Singapore

I got an Uber from my aunt's house down to the airport. She was willing to drop me off, but she would have had to cancel work and that would not have made economic sense relative to the price of the Uber. It was a bit of a challenge to get an Uber though, because there were none nearby when I called one and the issue with Perth is that it has such sprawling sparsely populated suburbs so if there's no Uber nearby it can be tricky.

I got a driver eventually and I had left plenty of time to get to the airport but the nearest driver was 15 minutes away so he can't have made much profit given Uber's margins with coming all that way to pick me up. Apparently he rejected the ride the first time and only took it when he saw it come up again. I noticed today that you can see your own star rating on Uber and I have 5 stars so that probably helps.

Perth's airport is one of the strangest airport set-ups I have ever seen. There are two entirely separate terminal complexes, which is not that unusual, but the weird thing is how domestic sections and international sections are dotted about with the main terminal being international but with an odd domestic section just for Virgin Australia and terminals 3 and 4 (which actually function as one terminal) having terminal four numbered just for Quantas to have their own terminal and another domestic and international mix. The airport has clearly had to expand over the years and they've been forced to do it in a rather disorganised way. Much like many of Australia's sprawling cities which is what makes Australia more difficult and costly to travel in, everything is so far apart and pretty much everyone drives around.

Anyway, I certainly don't expect Singapore to have the problem of being too spread apart. I'm flying to Singapore with Scoot Airlines, or flyscoot.com as they refer to themselves. They're a budget airline and you can always tell the budget carriers because they refer to themselves as xyz.com rather than just using the name. Scoot is a Singaporean budget carrier in the budget long-haul market with flights to Australian and Asian cities, and relatively recent flights from Singapore to Europe - Athens and Berlin TXL so far - which looks like a promising option for getting from Europe to Asia and Australia. My parents and brother used Scoot to go from Europe to Perth and it's much cheaper than the traditional airlines. Whether or not budget intercontinental travel is a good thing or not can certainly be debated.

When it comes to my Scoot plane, I was very happy to get a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It's an excellent aircraft and possibly my favourite one to fly. I also actually quite like the Scoot livery it's very yellow and covers the plane in a nice curving line over the plane and Scoot in big bold letters. I really like a livery with more colour on it and of course, it's on a 787! There were a lot of people on the flight though, the most of any of the flights I've done so far on this trip. And the 787 isn't even that big of an aircraft, especially relative to the Emirates A380 that was on the ground. (There was a South African A330 on the ground too, the days of quad jets are numbered). It's just that apart from my almost completely empty A350 to Bangkok, every other flight I've done has been on an A320. The 320s are everywhere in the Asia/Australia region!

As an aside, my newly lightened big backpack with all that stuff posted to myself is only 13kgs too and at check in, this was the first time on this trip that I've been questioned about my one-way flights and what I was intending to do. I'm surprised I hadn't been questioned about that before because every single flight on this trip except the Warsaw-Bangkok has been and will be a one-way (and an almost 4-month gap between flight out and return is the sort of thing I would have expected to evoke questioning too).

Overall I'm impressed by Scoot. The aircraft look good, they've not gone the Ryanair route or the Jetstar route of making their aircraft as cheap looking as possible. You can see it's a budget, but the cabin is tastefully done and the facilities are as I think a good LCC should have. They've gone for almost too cheesy with the puns in the in-flight magazine and the overuse of the word Scoot and Scooting and derivatives, but I don't think it's overdone. Scoot has achieved my seal of approval! With one, quite big, eexception: "consumption of outside food is not allowed" What the actual...? It's a plane, it's not a bloody restaurant! I'm aware that they're trying to drive more custom to their 'Scoot Café' but really? No way in hell I was buying Scoot's overpriced food. I do not know any other airline that does this. Minor complaints too of course, the attendant call button is located on the armrest in such a way that it's far too easy to accidentally press it with your elbow. I also thought they left the cabin lights on for too long while they flogged their food and duty free, but that's me.

Don't bother reading those last few paragraphs, it's just me being excessively verbose in reviewing my flight because I've got nothing else to do.

Upon landing at 11:30 you'd have thought I'd just get out of the airport and get to my accommodation as quickly as possible. Well, I've become so dependant on my phone now that first I stopped to buy and install a local sim card before going anywhere. For S$32 I got 100GB to use over 12 days. Take note, telecom companies of the world. That's how much data I want.

I got a Grab from the airport, hence the immidiately need for a sim. Normally I'd find a method cheaper than S$19 to get around but not now. The driver gave me a tour of the Singapore skyline with Marina Bay Sands and various Singaporean buildings as we drove into the city centre. I'm clearly in a very different place to anywhere else I've been on this trip. I'm staying in a capsule hotel in a pod which is very plastic and beepy and quite cool, but it's 2AM now and I'm going to sleep. I look forward to exploring the sites of Singapore this week, but I think I need a bit of a lie in first thing tomorrow...

 

Good tip about intercontinental flights from Scoot, I wasn't aware of those.

I'm pretty sure a number of airlines have a no outside food policy; AirAsia springs to mind.

 

Sunny Singapore

I didn't manage to get out particularly quickly and got out of the accommodation, after having had the included breakfast, around 10. I hadn't decided what to do yet for the day, and decided that it was too late by then to go to the zoo or bird park because I'd want to get to those two early, so headed out towards the SEA Aquarium. I've got six full days in Singapore which will be plenty of time so I don't need to rush constantly.

In terms of the accommodation in the pods GalaxyPods, they don't feel coffin-like at all because they've got lights and a mirror and air circulation and they're white. The room with the pods is a really high-density dorm, but it works far better than a traditional dorm at such high density because everyone has their own space in the pods and breakfast is provided at a central table in the middle. The pods are very moulded-plasticy though and everything is worked through an RFID card that opens the locker and all the doors and the pod and the lights and there's a lot of beeping. I think the pods do work though.

Also, I really need to resist the very strong temptation to get Grab everywhere while I'm in Singapore. It's so easy, and I can get to pretty much everywhere for S$20 which I don't even have to pay in cash because it comes off the card. Although that will of course add up rapidly and at the very least I need to get to a nearby station and then get a Grab. This blog is probably going to be the main thing making sure I do use the public transport because I'm accountable then!

I left the accommodation and headed to the nearest MRT - Mass Rapid Transport - station. My understanding is that Singapore public transport generally uses cards to pay for transport and although single tickets can be bought for trains, many services like the bus can only be paid for by the card. At the ticket office at the station, there was a fairly long queue to get a ticket but I think queues are a common thing in Singapore. It is very organised though, and not a mad scrum pushing in to get tickets. I had two options for tickets, I could either get a 3-day tourist pass for $20 for unlimited travel and then get another one for the second half of my six days or I could get an ordinary pass which I would have to keep topping up. I decided to get a tourist pass because that seemed easier than thinking about how much money to put on, and unlimited travel I decided would encourage me to use public transport rather than Grab.

I got the MRT a couple of stops down to the Harbourside Station to get towards Sentosa Island and from there I got a bus. A fairly large white bird seen flying over some greenery on the island was a Tanimbar Corella, an introduced but established and countable species in Singapore.

The SEA Aquarium was larger than I had expected with quite a few exhibits which were generally very good. Some cool species too like manta rays and chimaeras. However the aquarium was quite busy and or didn't even seem like a busy day for the aquarium given how long of a queuing area there was. But even on the day of my visit which seemed like probably an average day, there seemed to be too many people relative to the size of the facility and the amount of visitor space. The other issue with the aquarium was the lack of a unifying theme going around, or at least the lack of a sufficiently obvious one which is a shame because there's lots of good exhibits.

Entry to the aquarium today includes entry to the attached Maritime Museum which seemed quite well done with the sort of theme that the aquarium lacked. I don't generally find these sorts of historical museums very interesting, but this one wasn't bad.

After I was done with the aquarium and had a quick snack and wander around Sentosa Island, I got the bus back across to Harbour Front station. Somehow I managed to get lost for a while navigating the overpasses to where the station actually was, but I did eventually find a train. I decided to continue the sort of theme for the day and head to the Natural History Museum. I had heard mixed reports about whether it was worth visiting the museum or not, but decided it would be worth going over to have a look since I had the unlimited public transport card now and I do like natural history museums.

Of course I got lost again, or rather confused about the way out, of the MRT station nearest the museum because it's attached to massive hospital and medical school complex as part of the National University of Singapore. Eventually, I made it to the museum which is also part of the National University of Singapore and across the campus a bit.

The museum houses the old zoological collection in a very new building built in 2015 which is the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum. They didn't take cash at all for entry to the museum, only card which seemed odd but I think is not uncommon in Singapore. Unfortunately it's not one of those free natural history museums and it's S$21 to enter. This was one of the places I had on my to-visit list that I would drop if it didn't fit in the itinerary, but I'm glad I visited. It's really good! It's not huge, but there's lots of interesting stuff to look at, and it's very well done. I also like how they have quotation marks around the word "fish" whenever it's used, pointing out that's it's not a valid taxonomic group, and also use the correct plural of fishes for multiple species. I did not notice any incorrectly capitalised scientific names or anything like that. Impressive!

Definitely a museum worth visiting, lots of cool specimens, in interesting and well done displays, great signage and interactive museumy things, and unlike the aquarium it wasn't at all busy. The temporary display at the moment was a natural history of Christmas Island one which was cool. A great little museum.

I was done with the museum about 4PM which is later than I would have thought, but the museum was better than expected and I wasted time faffing about with trains. I was hungry by this point, and found a nearby restaurant which seemed to be catering to university students and staff. In fact, the person I ordered from asked if I was university staff, presumably there's a discount or something, but I was slightly surprised. Obviously I look mad and eccentric enough to work at a university with my mental hair that has not had anything done to it since Warsaw apart from an occasional wash, and my khaki, camo and hiking boots look.

I had thought about visiting Gardens by the Bay in the afternoon/evening, but it was past 5PM by the time I got back to the MRT station and I decided that I'd rather do the big paid attraction another day (we drove past it in the Grab from the airport so I knew it was impressive looking) and instead went to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Conveniently, it has its own MRT station on the same line. I coincided with students finishing school and university so there were lots of people, but the transit system coped with the numbers well, as you'd expect.

The Singapore Botanic Gardens were quite pleasant and nicely planted with some birds and Plantain Squirrels around too. Pied Imperial Pigeons were flying around, different to the Torresian Imperial Pigeons seen in Darwin. There was a Black Swan on one of the lakes which I believe must just be a single individual, and there were lots of Red Junglefowl-type chickens around. Does anyone know the status of these birds? Are they a real population of junglefowl? There was a Plaintive Cuckoo calling too, and I had a relaxed stroll around the gardens in the late afternoon and early evening, mostly birds that were common in Malaysia like magpie robins and Pink-necked Green Pigeons and Black-naped Orioles, but nice nonetheless.

At the gardens was a large group of young people, probably about my age, who all had identical matching shirts with the slogan 'we are independent' emblazoned in big bold letters across the front. I'm not sure if they appreciate the depth of that irony, but I certainly did. The National Orchid Gardens was closed by the time I got there, but there were lots of orchids to see outside.

I headed out of the park not long after sunset to get the MRT back to my accommodation. As I was walking out even before sunset, lots of bats started to come out.

I got back at about 8:30 to relax in my pod a bit before hopefully getting an early night. I've decided that I like having a pod much more than a dorm. Tomorrow I think I'll go to either the zoo or bird park. At the zoo I really want to find one of the wild Colugos that live there of course.

New birds:

Tanimbar Corella
Pied Imperial Pigeon
*Red Junglefowl (real wild junglefowl at the Singapore Botanic Gardens?)