Birds around town (and a few other items)

 I took myself off to Broome St on 9 August mainly hoping (but NOT expecting) that the Black-shouldered Kite we saw there earlier was still around.  It wasn't, but there were other birds of interest to be snapped.  The first were 2 White-bellied Cuckooshrikes near the boardwalk.  The photos are straight from Crap Bird Photography, but do support the ID!

I then took some snaps of the group of Royal Spoonbills.

Possibly an Abbey Road tribute?

Eventually only 1 Spoonbill was left on the RHS of the Lagoon, with a few friends.

Then it too flew across.

I went to the end of Coulls Inlet hoping for a Striated Heron or an Azure Kingfisher.  The latter obliged, albeit initially in a very backlit way requiring severe exposure fiddling with my computer.

Then it was kind enough to move!

Going to full zoom and 2x digizoom gave quite a good image.

On the way home I stopped to snap a Clematis.  First a snap at 100mm setting.  

Then one at 400 mm x 2!

Frances then mentioned seeing a rail at Stingray Point (where she has seen one before) so I went to check the site out.  No rails (or crakes) were seen, but I did get good views of a Black-shouldered Kite about 150m away looking over the Fisheries Jetty Marsh.  As part of the process of learning about my new camera I offer 4 images of the Kite.  

The first is the full image at full zoom plus 2X digital zoom.

Cropping in to the bird reveals a lot of noise in the image (but it is still OK as a record shot).

Here is the full image without digital zoom.

Cropping in to that gives a much cleaner image of the bird.  Obviously I need to think about when to use the digital zoom.

I also got a pleasing image of a Pelican

And an interesting image of a flock of Grebes.  In the past grebes in the Inlet have always been Hoary-headed Grebes.  However the colouration of this flock suggest to me that they are Australasian Grebes.  Curiouser and curiouser!

The final outing for the day was to Bastion Point to check out the salt marsh there.  One should say "used to be there": the mouth has moved right up to the steps 

There is a small expanse of sand where the marsh used to be but the amount of washed over weed suggests that it won't be there for long.

This is what is left of Devlins Inlet!

The most interesting birds were two Jacky Winters, which are not usually found at the beach.