I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June

[gemfyre]

I got up at 5:17am today (my bladder woke me 13 minutes before the alarm would have). I drove down to Hillary's Marina to cough up $85 and board a boat to out past Rottnest and hopefully see albatross and shearwaters and various other pelagic birds.

As I got to the boat I could hear the engine running and realised they were moving away from the jetty slightly and a guy was throwing the rope off. I waved and signaled that I was meant to be on the boat.

Not to be. Apparently an e-mail saying "You were the last to get a place." means "We overbooked, you were later than the first 20, you lose." Apparently 6 other people who had also woken at the crack of dawn didn't get on the boat either. Wasn't happy.

As I was heading home I remembered that the Herdsman Lake walk was on today and figured it probably started at 8am, I had time to get there.

Spent a lovely day walking around Herdsman instead. Saw some weirdos like Sacred Kingfisher, Elegant Parrot and Cattle Egret and managed almost 60 species in all - a far better count than I'd get on any pelagic, and I saved $85!

Comments

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

If I miss out because someone else overbooks I would be truely *pissed*.

I got to see some birdies today too.

[alastair irvine (from livejournal.com)]

cool! Glad to hear that your knee lasted the whole day.

And since when are egrets weird? :-)

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

The knee is getting pretty good. Gimme a few months and I reckon I'll be able to run again.

Egrets aren't weird overall, but a Cattle Egret in Perth is.