Broome’s little peninsula points south. Roebuck Bay is to the east, the Indian Ocean to the west. Shores are rocky or sandy or covered by mangroves. Habitats galore …
Down by the sea …
Tag: Broome
It’s a set-up …
Friends have a little dog. He’s only young but he’s had a very tough life, brought to death’s door by thrombocytopenia. Saved by a blood transfusion and a lot of medication, he is very precious to them. They’ve recently had a well deserved holiday and rather than put little Wilco in a kennel they opted to have people that he knows look after him in his own home. That’s Gayle and me. It just happens that they live on a bush block and routinely put out water for the birds. So much birdier than in town. Volunteering was a no brainer.
Then came some unexpected rain, very high tides and a steady wind that delivered hordes of ravenous mosquitoes. All of which reduced the opportunity to wander around enjoying the outdoors.
My usual mode of bird photography is to go for a walk and take photos opportunistically. I enjoy it but backgrounds are often messy. Branches intrude on the subject or twigs seem to grow out of their heads. The alternative is to build a set-up and entice the birds to come to you. In a dry country water is usually a sufficient bribe to bring in some birds. If the background is uniform and well behind the subject it will produce a nice creamy bokeh. You can even scour the countryside looking for a particularly photogenic perch.
So I set up close to the house, offered water and took some photos standing at the kitchen sink straight through the window. The frustrated mosquitoes queued up at the door.
Red-winged Parrots …
The late May deluge has so far amounted to 123mm (almost 5inches in the old money) or 4.5 times Broome’s average monthly rainfall in just two days. A trip out to the Broome Bird Observatory at the moment would be a great adventure (and probably illegal). Bike riding has taken a brief holiday. It has given me a chance to review and edit some recent photos.
Broome is not the place to come looking for Australia’s colourful parrots. We do have Red-collared Lorikeets and occasionally Varied Lorikeets but when it comes to the larger parrots (I’m excluding Cockatoos from this discussion) Red-winged Parrots are the best we can hope for. They come and go. Just recently they have been abundant. And they are gorgeous especially the males.
They eat flowers, seeds and berries. They are mainly found in woodland and have a broad distribution. which extends northward into Papua New Guinea. Broome is close to their western limit.
Clairvoyance …
Well, disregard that last sentence.
I started to get worried about a couple of days ago when Weatherzone published Unusual late May deluge for northern Australia with the news that “The coastal tourism hotspot of Broome sees just 27mm of rain in on average in the whole of May but is expecting as much as 80mm next Tuesday alone.” It was accompanied by a very colourful map …
and followed by local government warnings about driving into flood waters and a flood alert for the Great Sandy Desert. I have little faith in weather forecasts.
Just to illustrate how bad they are today’s forecast was for showers this afternoon amounting to about 4mm. I headed out for my morning ride at 0630 in a very light drizzle and made it back by 0700 looking like a drowned rat. There was at least 4mm in my left shoe alone.
Broome on a Bike …
Readers who’ve been with me for a while may remember a flurry of posts proclaiming that cycling is the best form of exercise for the mature human. What became of all that? Well, it persisted. It’s part of my life. I enjoy it. It does me good. But …
You knew there was a but coming didn’t you? A good time to ride is early morning, especially in the tropics. The best time to watch birds is early in the morning, especially in the tropics. At home it’s OK to fit them in side by side. Some mornings the bike, some mornings the binoculars. On my expeditions the suite of birds is changing fairly quickly. The bike goes with me but the birds win out.
Having settled back into Broome it’s time to charge up the little toys that cyclists attach to their conveyance, oil the chain, pump up the tyres and head out. I consulted Strava. I presume there is some algorithm in the core of its soul that takes account of recent activity (none) and perhaps age (ancient) and comes up with a suggested target. It did a splendid job and suggested 15km per week. An excellent idea, I thought. Sadly it was immediately vetoed by my dearly beloved. Thirty five today she insisted. A short ride to ease back into it.
On with the Lycra. I felt like a multi-coloured whale. Then the zip popped. A stranded multi-coloured whale that had bloated and burst. That was my largest top but fortunately I found a smaller one with a stronger zip.
Swing onto the saddle, clip in, wobble. I could not have felt more alien. My new multifocal sunglasses conspired to create the illusion that I was on top of a penny-farthing but the legs felt really good … for a while. After 35 km it all felt like old times (apart from my bottom, that is). Just like riding a bike.
Broome has one major road in and out. Large trucks, speed limit varying between 90 and 110kph for the main part. The alternative is to ride around town. You have to be creative to come up with a long enough ride and then it does become repetitive but you can take in some beautiful spots like Cable Beach and Entrance Point. You do have to share the road to the Port with road trains that are four trailers (60m) long but they are driven by professionals. I’m actually more frightened of the old men towing caravans.
And, in winter, the weather is perfect. Get out early to avoid sunburn. It isn’t going to rain.
Banana Well …
About half way between Cygnet Bay and Broome, close to the community of Beagle Bay, there is a turnoff to the west that leads to Banana Well. The road is unmade and presently the last 4km is pretty rough. The camp site is grassed and the facilities are adequate. There are some ponds adjacent to the camping area. It’s a couple of kilometres from the “beach” across tidal flats that are not without hazard. It’s a great spot for the birdo, hopeless for a family beach holiday, seems popular with some fisher folk but would be a bugger of a place to launch a boat.
It’s not hard to get into this situation but expensive to get out. I’m pleased to say that’s not me. I took the photo on a previous visit. Had he taken his foot off the accelerator when the wheels started to slip we could have pulled him out. He gunned it and managed another 150 metres ending up well beyond solid ground. The momentum system of four wheel driving has its drawbacks!
There is a marked walking trail starting from the camp ground that visits the ponds, some savanna woodland, tidal flats, mangroves and some fairly dense Melaleuca. Birding is excellent around the ponds.
There is a large population of feral Donkeys in the neighbourhood.
The Grey-crowned Babblers were busily building a nest but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s breeding season for them. They build dome shaped nests for roosting as well as for egg laying.
I finished the gallery with the two noisy ones. The Donkeys seemed less shy this visit and the Kookaburras are never shy.
Cygnet Bay …
We got home to Broome. I heaved a sigh and settled into a torpor.
There is a limit to how much torpor I can do. So the van was rolled out again for a short expedition up the Dampier Peninsula. Broome is on a little peninsula hanging, – like a little boy’s tossel, off a big peninsula. The big peninsula is named for William Dampier (1651-1715), the first English man to explore Australia. In January 1688 his little ship the Cygnet was careened near the tip of the peninsula.
Off to the east of Cygnet Bay is King Sound with Derby near the southern end, an area famous for it’s 11 meter tides. The other blue stuff on the chart is the Indian Ocean. Highway 1 comes up from Perth on the left hand side of the map then curves around and heads east towards the Northern Territory. The country enclosed by the highway is the Great Sandy Desert. The peninsula is not desert and therein lies much of its charm.
Until just a few years ago the road up the peninsula was dirt. It was a great adventure for the tourist in the dry but a nightmare for the aboriginal communities in the wet. It is now a beautiful sealed road. The drive takes you through savanna, a few patches of open grassland and, in places, genuine forest. The blacktop stretches out in front of you fringed by bright red dirt. The dirt gives way to spear grass, some of it twice my height and the trees. Soon the Woollybutts (Eucalyptus miniata) will flower and the scene will go from beautiful to spectacular.
At Cygnet Bay and in other odd places on the peninsula there are patches of semi-deciduous tropical vine forest. That’s quite a mouthful, unpack it if you will or just think – jungle.
This is the western end of the north coast and the western limit of a number of north coast birds. It is still in the Shire of Broome so guess where every Broome birdo worth their salt comes to add Rose-crowned Fruit Dove, Shining Flycatcher and Mangrove Robin to their year list? Pathetic isn’t it? There is a very pleasant campground, a restaurant and a pearl shop. The Fruit Doves can be found conveniently close to the bar, and there are plenty of other birds to find as well.
That’s a hermit crab in the Beach Stonecurlew’s grasp. I don’t know if it would crush the shell or just swallow the lot. It is a ferocious looking beak.
We spent three nights ay Cygnet Bay. On the way home we spent another night at Banana Well.
Electric …
Lightning, a natural phenomenon of electrostatic discharges in the atmosphere.
It’s the wet season here in Broome, hot, humid and charged. There was a storm out over Roebuck Bay last night …
A New Year …
I do wish you a happy and trouble free 2025.
Bird watchers around the globe have been out chasing a big day to get their year list off to a good start. Me too. I was introduced to a competition of sorts by birders on Townsville Common. It’s simple. Your list has to be bigger than the number of days elapsed in the year. Easy at first, it gets tougher as you get deeper in the year. When you fall behind you’re out. I call it the Calendar Game and play just against myself. I have lost every year since the Big Panic changed my travel habits.
So on the first of the new year I got ahead of January and February. I have a road trip coming up so the list should move along well for a while.
While having a look at Broome’s Entrance Point a couple pulled up near me and asked, had I seen it? Not only had I not seen it, I didn’t know what it was. They’d found it on the oval in town and alerted the bird watching community. I was the last birdo in town to reach the oval … not long after it had gone. The alert had come through on my watch, which was at home charging.
It was a gull. It had been very happy to hang out with other gulls especially around anybody who looked like they had food. Next stop all the other places that I knew gulls congregated starting with Town Beach …
Americans will be wondering why the fuss? A Laughing Gull, so what?
It’s the first record for WA and new for my Australia list. Thank you Clare and Grant.
No Gutters …
So Singapore is wrapped up and it’s home to Broome, just in time for the wet. That’s Man-gala in the local Yawuru language. Last year’s wet was largely spent wondering when the rain would come. This year is a different story. Gayle insisted on our morning bike ride. We got back looking like drowned rats. 54mm in 34 minutes. That’s 2¼ inches in neolithic money.
You rarely see any guttering in Broome. No need at all for half the year. In the other half when it rains it’s with such intensity that gutters wouldn’t cope.
bobmcgee 