The pros...

Vincentia, Jervis Bay

We've just had a lovely weekend down in Jervis Bay with a few friends and unusually for me we spent most of our time just hanging out on the beach and in the surf. Of course I can't be doing that for too long and so we also found a nice rock platform and broke out the fishing gear.

Bream

The frozen prawns did the trick again and we were soon pulling out some nice fish.

Crimson-banded Wrasse

Eastern Wirrah Cod 

Just south of Jervis Bay there's a place called Bendalong Beach which is known for it's friendly stingrays. We had a few prawns left over and so we headed down there and sure enough a number of rays turned up for a feed. No monster stingrays on this occasion but several nice eagle rays which would swim up and butt your ankles. They were more than happy to let you stroke them and were very much at ease. I always thought that the eagle rays were harmless but I've since read that they too have a nasty stinging spike at the base of the tail. Maybe I wouldn't have been as hands on with the larger ones if I'd known that beforehand!

Southern Eagle Rays

 

... and the cons

No swimming

Of course the Australian fauna isn't always fun as some poor woman found out in Botany Bay on Friday when a Great White decided to have a little nibble. You have to keep your wits about you and I'm sure the constant low level stress is not doing me any good at all!

 

No clean clothes

  

Super blue blood moon

The other evening was apparently a bit special for those who like to watch the night sky. We had a super moon, a blue moon and a total lunar eclipse all coinciding to give a massive blood moon. This hasn't happened here in Australia since December 1983 but in some other parts of the world it hasn't been observed for up to 150 years. What better place to see such a rare phenomenon than Sydney where the sky is always clear with never a cloud in sight. Except this one particular night. Clouds everywhere. Rubbish.

Cloudy

At least I got another bird for the list by just sitting there in the house. The latest official IOC world bird list has just come out and so I thought I'd better check up on the most up-to-date thinking regarding Australian species. As luck would have it there have been a couple of splits down here over the past couple of years. One of these is the Golden Whistler from over in WA which is now regarded as a full species. Thankfully I made a note of everything I saw a few years back when I was over there and so the new Western Whistler which was #428 goes onto the list taking the total up to 489. Armchair tick!