2006/07 Australia trip - Broome Bird Observatory |
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Friday July 14th
In the morning we had sun but a cool breeze, surprising for a wind coming off a tropical ocean. We spent the whole day at the Bird Observatory, walking its trails in the surrounding bush and along the beaches.
To avoid the cool wind we walked inland on the Malarus Trail, which goes through the bush and then out into a marshy area. This was lined with dozens of crab carcasses: apparently the land crabs swarm in huge numbers when the rains come, and then die in equally large numbers when things dry up. There were also many huge termite mounds in this area, big misshapen blobs, like overweight sumo wrestlers lurking amongst the trees. There were kites and eagles circling overhead looking for any kind of food. The sea eagle adults are very large black and white birds with the youngsters mottled, both just beautiful to watch. They can hang in the wind for minutes without appearing to move.
The trail comes out at the end of the road, where the coast’s mangrove forest begins. The combination of red cliffs, yellow sand, green mangroves, and the milky turquoise ocean overloads the senses. The water looked very inviting for a swim, but the multiple threats of salties, sharks, jellyfish, and poisonous cone shells keep most people out of the water. At high tide the water 
runs blood red from the stirred up sand.
The shore was where we’d expected to see most birds, but although the observatory had asked that we didn’t walk on the beach at high tide to avoid disturbing the birds, the locals are more interested in fishing than the birds. There were aborigines fishing with hand lines and whites fishing with large expensive looking rods, but the net result was the same: nobody was catching fish and there were few shore birds around.
But there were lots of birds in the bush behind the beach and we spent the day just wandering around these sections. There were plenty of other oddities: coconuts on the beach and giant nuts that I think might have
been Coco de Mer from the Seychelles. There were also these giant flying burrs. You know the painful grass burrs that you sometimes get in your socks? Well, imagine them the size of your hand and being blown along the beach by the wind! Sunbathe at your peril!
We came across a swallowtail butterfly that had found an almost empty can of Emu Bitter and was shlurpingit up. Sandie stood the can up and the butterfly didn’t move, so she picked it up and put it on branch but it fell off!
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Broome bird observatory (12.22) |
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Some of the beaches were a maze of eroded rocks. The one to the right just has to be named Chicken Rock.
The twitchers (bird watchers) were out with their giant binoculars and spotting scopes, watching birds miles out on the mud 
flats. One very serious young German came over to us and whispered “Sacred Kingfisher. Mangroves”. We whispered our thanks.
In the evening we went to the Shade House where all the bird watchers meet to discuss the day’s sightings. We wanted the experts to look at our pictures and identify some of the birds. We ended up taking part in the warden’s daily report when he goes down his list of birds and asks if anyone’s seen the bird on that day. Obviously they do this often as he’d be corrected if he missed one on the list. It turned out that we’d actually seen an unusual bird for the area, a black-shouldered kite, and even had a good photo of it (top centre), so we left our first ever twitchers’ meeting with honours. They were all nice people but it did seem an odd evening!
We still hadn’t been shopping so this time it was curried soup and beans and rice.
Saturday July 15th
In the morning there was a big crowd at the observation platform, with lots of overdressed people clutching glasses of wine: odd for seven in the morning. It was a wedding, presumably of a couple of twitchers. They had a good sendoff: a jabiru on the beach and brahminy kites in the sky.
We left the bird observatory and went into Broome to do some much needed laundry and food shopping. This was in the Chinatown area, but it didn’t look like the usual Chinatown: all new cream coloured corrugated iron buildings along the edge of the beach, a pleasant spot on a sunny morning, but not a Chinatown.