Awake from some time after 3 and really didn't get back to sleep at all. Maybe a few minutes at one point. Mostly angry at Skytrans for not just delaying the flight til later or running another flight the next day, but also angry at Blue Lagoon who likely double dip on the situation (I guarantee they'd charge anyone who got stuck on the island for the night, as well the people who don't turn up) and also got hungry a couple of times. Hurray.
Went to The Scottish Restaurant for breakfast.
Then headed into the Royal National Park. I probably haven't been in at least 30 years. We stopped at the visitors centre at Audley and paid the $12 park entry, and bought a map as well.
We drove across the little bridge and down to Wattle Forest. The only really interesting bird we saw was a green cat bird. But then a lace monitor came wandering through and the ravens and the cockatoos were NOT happy about the situation. One raven was chasing the monitor and trying to grab its tail, and the monitor kept its tail curled up as it moved. The cockatoos were SCREECHING and then one flew down and was screeching and had its wings out trying to scare off the lizard. It was hilarious to watch!
Next up we headed down to Garie Beach. We didn't find any emu wrens or other wrens, the only really intersting thing we saw were a couple of raptors (including a sea eagle being chased by a raven). We walked a little bit of the way to Little Garie to get closer to a young great cormorant but then turned back.
We stopped at Governor Game Lookout on the way out.
Then we drove all the way up to Bundeena for lunch (Stu wanted fish and chips, which we found at P&P Kitchen). Got some ice creams from the IGA and walked down to the bay, but there was a film crew on the beach so we didn't go down.
Instead we drove out to Maianbar. It was super high tide which meant no wading birds on the mudflats poking around. But right at the end of Deeban Spit we saw a couple of chestnut teals (they followed us all the way out), a couple of pied oyster catchers, and then a heap of eastern curlews, bar-tailed godwits, a few greater crested terns, a few caspian terns, and one gull-billed tern (the later ones being quite rare here apparently). So that was pretty cool. And on the way back we saw this poor white-faced heron being yelled at by noisy miners. Funny stuff.
Then back to Mum's to download all the photos and give some to Stu for uploading to ebird. I also downloaded my GPS. Not sure what happened but I don't have any track for yesterday. No idea what happened, I was sure I started/stopped it. But then I was in such an altered mental state yesterday anything is possible.
Slightly earlier night.
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