The last couple of days I have
concentrated my efforts on finding the resident Powerful Owl which frequent the
Sydney Botanical Gardens. The weather has not been too favourable in the
mornings with tropical downpours of rain making the thirty minute walk from my
hotel tricky! Both afternoons have brightened up with enough sunshine to dry
out in.
I combined some intelligence
gathering (speaking to staff at the gardens) with a basic tree by tree search
looking for this large owl which is around sixty seven centimeters in size. My persistence
did not pay off on the first day with no sign of the Owl.
This morning the search began whilst
using any bit of cover I could find to not get caught in the heaviest of the
showers. Two circuits of the gardens around the café were completed and morale
was at a low when I heard the Miners alarm calling and flying in and out of the
same tree that provided almost complete cover from the rain.
I hot footed it some twenty
metres hoping the Owl would be the cause of the commotion. To my delight the
Owl looked down at me with its beady yellow eyes. It seemed to be intimating “Are
you going to get this lot off me!” The Miners did retreat allowing spectacular
views of the largest Australian Owl. The Owl had lunch in its talons in the
form of a bat.
This was a big Woo Hoo moment
which was kept under wraps until I was a safe distance away! I have spent a lot
of time spotlighting in Australia for my favourite families (Strigidae,Tytonidae)
of birds with minimal success.
Tomorrow I am on my travels to
New Zealand and I hope I leave the rain behind this time!
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