Wednesday 20 March 2019

Australia - NSW - Sydney Botanical Gardens - Powerful Owl!


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 cafĂ© 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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