Taking care of foreign guests can be a daunting task – but when they have special needs it is even harder.  When your guest say to you each and every day – Where are we going to go bird watching today? – I guess you would eventually run out of places to take them.  Not so with our intrepid hostesses.   Today they outdid themselves and showed as an amazing time at two different venues.  The first was Hunter’s Wetland which is a conservation sanctuary, with over 200 wildlife species identified on site. It consists of 45 hectares of wetlands and, it is the perfect nature-based tourism destination to explore, discover and relax.  There were a number of walking trails we could do and Earl and I spent a couple of hours exploring while  Aunt and Colette relaxed at the Visitor’s Centre where we joined them afterwards for a delicious lunch and then relaxed and watched the birds from the deck.

Moorhen with chicks

Purple Swamphen and Teal

Great Egrets

Wandering Whistling Duck

Magpie Geese

Magpie Goose

Royal Spoonbill

A gang of Spoonbills

White-necked heron

Spotted Dove

The Wetland

White Ibis nesting

Beautiful Butterfly

Later in the afternoon we made our way to Kooragang Wetlands and onto Ash Island which had a gravel roads to drive around it.   It turned out to be quite an adventure as the maze of roads got a tad confusing.   However, our wonderings led us to some amazing ponds and we found some special birds.  The bird of the day was the Black-fronted Dotterel which Leonie spotted at the side of the road all on its own and well camouflaged in the scrubby vegetation.   It resembles the three banded plover which we see at home.  We were also thrilled to find Red-necked avocets.  At first glance we thought they were some exotic duck as they were swimming with their bills in the water.  Then we noticed that they were curved upwards and when wading behaved like our pied avocets at home.

Black fronted dotterel

Red-necked Avocet