Australia - Birds of the Blue Mountains and Sydney

A recent trip to Sydney and the nearby Blue Mountains region with the family provided the opportunity to explore the ways that Australians are promoting habitat gardening and biodiversity in this region.  

We stayed at a lovely AirBnb in Leura, NSW, in the Blue Mountains. Most of this area is a massive wildlife reserve and is rich with biodiversity. The variety of birdsong, especially in the mornings, was amazing. Here are a few of the ones that we captured on camera, though we could hear hundreds more. They are the most active before dawn and at dusk, so images were hard to capture. If you go, I highly recommend staying in a place that has an adjoining wild space so you can fully experience the wildlife here.

Grandson, Charlie, took a picture of this red and green King Parrot in the back yard:

I jumped up in the middle of a conversation in the living room so I could capture this image of the Eastern Spinebill in a (non-native) flowering quince. This bird returned to this bush regularly to nectar on the flowers, so if I lived here, I'd actually consider planting it as part of my 30% non-native garden area.

At a lookout near Leura, I saw these beautiful birds but have not yet identified them. 

This Sulphur Crested Cockatoo was in a eucalyptus tree on Lindeman Road in Leura. We often saw flocks of these flying around this area in the morning, though they seemed to head east for the middle part of the day. 

This was as close as I could get to this Australian magpie, though the throaty songs of these birds was ubiquitous in the morning and evening bird choir. 

We returned from a long walk along Lindeman Road to find Crimson Rosellas in the garden at our AirBnb. This one perched in the same quince mentioned earlier. 

We went into Sydney for a day and met up with relatives Alice and Scarlett for lunch at the Sydney Botanical Gardens. The regal black and white ibises were everywhere, but as they forage for food in urban environments, they have earned the unfortunate nickname 'bin chickens'.  I still think they are lovely!

Nearby, a Kukaburra perched on a high branch and surveyed the scene.

We walked from the Botanical Garden to the Circulary Quay where we saw many of these gulls, with their bright orange beaks and feet and light golden eyes.