Around Exmouth

Exmouth is an amazing place, not a particularly beautiful town, but it really feels like you are in the outback or in a frontier town. Emus walking around the streets, warning signs about dingos and some familiar species not looking quite so familiar as I expected.

Take the bird above for example. It's a crested pigeon, quite common across all of Australia including in the major cities of the south and east.This however is of the western race whitlocki which seems to me to be much brighter than others I have seen.

Brolga, one of two crane species in Australia.

Emu walking around the campsite.

Masked lapwings are pretty common across large parts of Australia, particularly the further east you travel. I've even seen them on the steps of Sydney Opera House. This bird was of interest though since it's of the northern subspecies miles which has no black on the neck and the yellow lappet on the face is quite a bit larger in this subspecies. Quite a smart looking bird.

Red kangaroo.

Wood sandpiper. There were about eight of these on the sewage works and they were an Aussie tick for me.

Visitors to the major cities of the south and east coast, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra, could be forgiven for thinking that the common miner in Australia is Noisy miner, but they would be wrong. Noisy miner only covers about 25% of the country but it just so happens that it's all along the heavily populated south and east coasts. Here in the west and across the north and center, with a total coverage of around 90% of Australia, the common miner is actually the yellow-throated miner.

Mother and calf humpback whales.

Calf humpback playing.

Mother and calf humpback whale.