Fantastic birding in Malaysia and Singapore is only part of the story when I’m on a trip that also involves visiting Sydney, Australia of course - even if said “visiting” amounts to little more than having the day I arrive after an eight hour flight available, plus the following morning before flying back to Singapore again (which feels a little like birding on the end of a bungee rope to be honest - one minute you’re leaping off Singapore, the elasticated rope fires you into Sydney and there’s just time to look around before - BOING - you’re bounced back into Singapore again wondering why your head feels scrambled and you want to throw up!).

I’d already checked the weather forecast for Sydney before I left and it looked grim - which was borne out by landing in the sort of thick rain that only something as muscular as a jumbo jet stands a chance of fighting its way through. I often rent a car at the airport on this trip - casually keeping up a flow of conversation to prove to the agent on the desk that a) I’m safe to drive, and b) I’m wide awake after a long flight, but I think usually only demonstrating that c) I’m actually neither - but not this time: in this part of Aus an autumn day can be miserable from dawn to dusk, and as I’m currently saving for a flatscreen TV I’ve things I want to do with my money other than paying to sit all day in a car waiting for the rain to stop…

Of course those of you who know my writing style by now (if you can actually call it a ’style’) will have probably figured out that by the time I’d got back to the hotel an hour later, had had a shower, and was trying to get some sleep the clouds had parted and the sun was suddenly tapping on the bedroom window with a smirk and the sort of gusto it usually reserves for birders who didn’t rent a car to go birding. Blimey, I had no choice - I just had to go birding again.

I don’t know about you but I tend to make mistakes and overlook the obvious when I’m really tired (especially when I’m scabby, crabby, and dehydrated too) - and I made a bit of a doozy by deciding that the place I ought to go to was the Olympic Park, a site that Graham had (I thought) gone to on a hired bicycle in January and therefore couldn’t be all that far away. He’d seen some good birds too. Built on the side of the Paramatta River near Homebush Bay, Olympic Park - as its name suggests - the Park was envisaged as being part of Sydney’s efforts to ensure that the 2000 Olympic Games was the ‘greenest’ ever, and as well as being a haven of open spaces and cycle trails also includes a chunk of mangrove swamp with boardwalks and an especially-created shallow wetland/mudflat used by shorebirds and waterfowl. What could be nicer than a stroll through pleasant surroundings on a weekday (a Monday to be accurate) when most Sydneysiders would be at work?

Mangrove boardwalk (top) and wetland at Olympic Park, Sydney

I’m sure on most Mondays that would be an accurate assessment, but for some reason (oh, I don’t know - jet-lag perhaps) I’d managed to overlook the fact that this monday was Easter Monday. I’d also not grasped that Olympic Park is one of the city’s prime venues for recreationally-inclined locals: the city council goes out of its way (it seems) to funnel everyone from a hundred-mile radius into the park on high-days and holidays and provide for them all the ghastly sideshows and fairground rides they could possibly want to visit while clutching pints of beer in polystyrene cups and chewing on hot-dogs. Forgive me if I’m sounding peevish, but finding yourself the only person within sight who’s not yelling at the top of his voice at their kids is something that does in fact peeve me - especially when I’m birding. Relax and chill out, you say? I wish. I’m normally coiled tighter than a delegate on polling day as it is and realising that I’d just paid a small fortune in taxi fares (that sneaky Graham apparently took his bicycle on the train and only started riding it when he got to the park, he told me later ) to join a crowd of several thousand merrymakers was never going to relax me - especially as I soon learnt that several prime birding spots had been closed off to allow “horses to exercise” (no, it was a first for me too) and access to others meant going through security check-points (and I wasn’t exactly dressed like you average Goodtime Joe)…

Okay, I’ve probably laboured the “poor little me” point hard enough. Even if the birding wasn’t as good as I’d hoped (and definitely not as good as it would have been if I’d rented a car and gone out of the city) it’s difficult not to see something of interest on a whole new continent. Virtually every bird you see in Sydney will be an Australian endemic with the exception of introduced species like Common Myna and Spotted Dove, and within minutes of arriving at Olympic Park I’d found cracking birds like Royal Spoonbill, Chestnut and Grey Teal, the aptly-named Superb Fairy-wren, and White-plumed Honeyeater.

Royal Spoonbill Platalea regia (left) and Australian White Ibis Threskiornis molucca

Male Superb Fairywren Malurus cyaneus

The mangrove area (which you walk through to get to the wetland) was quiet but still held Yellow Thornbill, and by the time I’d reached a purpose-built hide at the far end of the mudflat I’d added species I rarely see such as the recently-split White-headed Stilt (split from Black-winged Stilt), Red-capped Plover and Black-fronted Dotterel, plus more widespread species like Masked Lapwing and White-faced Heron and my first Bar-tailed Godwits of the year - piling on the last grams of fat before making their way to the Yellow Sea and my brother Nial and the SSMP conservation programme I’m sponsoring this year. All good stuff of course.

Chestnut Teals Anas castanea

White-faced Heron Egretta novaehollandiae

White-headed Stilt Himantopus leucocephalus

Masked Lapwing Vanellus miles

By early afternoon I was all but “tuckered out” (as the phrase goes in Australia). The sun was roasting me like a “shrimp on a barbie”, the crowds had swelled, the birds had mostly gone into hiding, and I’d realised I hadn’t brought nearly enough water with me to sustain sitting in the shade let alone wandering around in hiking boots with a heavy camera (oh, how out of place did I look?). Still, I had stumbled on a lifer - the rather lovely Double-barred Finch, which I’ll admit now I’d never heard of before and had to find in the field-guide - and picked up other commoner endemics like White-browed Scrubwren, Malgpie-lark, and Red-browed Firetail (a trio that in print sounds mighty intriguing eh?).

I had one last stop to make as well. I’d seen on one of many information boards that I was wandering in the direction of a small freshwater lake, which surely meant I would add a few cormorants and possibly a few more ducks to the day list (even if lakes seem to act as magnets to your average Aussie kid - most of which are apparently Olympic standard swimmers by the time they’re three - and are usually heavily disturbed).

Sure enough the lake held a small island festooned with three nesting cormorant species - Pied, Little Pied, and Little Black - and a few Australian Darters, as well as the ubiquitous Dusky Moorhens, Purple Swamphens, and Pacific Black Ducks (Australia’s Mallard-equivalent). It was also the epicentre for every family in Sydney, which meant there were few birds in total and that I wasn’t going to stay very long (it just doesn’t feel right standing amongst crowd of parents and their kids - most of whom are in shorts and t-shirts - carrying a camera, binoculars, and an old grubby rucksack).

Pied Cormorant Phalacrocorax varius

Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosus

Still I took a few photos which I’ll leave you with (including the bathing Pied Cormorant above), and spare you the details of sitting on the train back to Sydney amongst a group of the most stoned teenagers I’ve ever listened in on, and being accused of trying to fare dodge when I went to the ticket office while holding the correct money in my outstretched hand! Such tales can wait for another day I think…

Day List (new for the year underlined):
Australasian Little Grebe Tachybaptus novaehollandiae 2; Little Black Cormorant Phalacrocorax sulcirostris 30+; Pied Cormorant Phalacrocorax varius 20+; Little Pied Cormorant Phalacrocorax melanoleucos 10+; Darter Anhinga melanogaster 4; Great Egret Egretta alba ; White-faced Heron Egretta novaehollandiae 4; Australian White Ibis Threskiornis molucca 20+; Royal Spoonbill Platalea regia 3; Black Swan Cygnus atratus 4; Maned Duck Chenonetta jubata 10+; Grey Teal Anas gracilis c)8-10; Chestnut Teal Anas castanea 100+; Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosa 4-5; Australian Black-shouldered Kite Elanus axillaris 2; White-bellied Sea-eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster 2; Purple Swamphen Porphyrio porphyrio c)10; Dusky Moorhen Gallinula tenebrosa 30+; Eurasian Coot Fulica atra 4; White-headed Stilt Himantopus leucocephalus c)50; Masked Lapwing Vanellus miles c)20; Red-capped Plover Charadrius ruficapillus 1; Black-fronted Dotterel Elseyornis melanops 12-15; Bar-tailed Godwit Limosa lapponica 8; Silver Gull Larus novaehollandiae 100+; Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis 4; Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Cacatua galerita 1; Rainbow Lorikeet Trichoglossus haematodus 2+; Laughing Kookaburra Dacelo novaeguineae 1; Welcome Swallow Hirundo neoxena c)10; Willie-wagtail Rhipidura leucophrys 3; Superb Fairywren Malurus cyaneus 20+; White-browed Scrubwren Sericornis frontalis 3; Yellow Thornbill Acanthiza nana 2+; White-plumed Honeyeater Lichenostomus penicillatus 4; Noisy Miner Manorina melanocephala 10+; Brush Wattlebird Anthochaera chrysoptera 2; Magpie-lark Grallina cyanoleuca c)10; Pied Currawong Strepera graculina 3; Australian Raven Corvus coronoides 30+; Red-browed Firetail Neochmia temporalis 8-10; Double-barred Finch Taeniopygia bichenovii 1