As well as the hilltop walk in yesterday’s blog entry, we also walked around the lake at Manning Park.
Along the way we spotted a Nankeen Night Heron, patiently waiting for lunch to swim past (above), and a family of Pink-eared Ducks, who were rather pointedly swimming away from the camera. Just camera shy, maybe.
We have recently been for several walks around Herdsman Lake, just 7km from Perth CBD (visible on the horizon in these photos).
There are plenty of waterbirds at the lake at present, both common birds like ibises (above) and more unusual/colourful birds like the male Australasian Shoveler below.
We also saw some striking Banksias in flower during our visit to the Blue Mountains last month.
The one up top is Hairpin Banksia. We didn’t recognise the Banksias shown in the other photos. Feel free to post a comment if you know what species they are.
We also saw some impressive late autumn wildflowers during our visit to Katoomba last month. These ones were all growing along the Prince Henry Cliff Walk.
The spiky flower up top is Mountain Devil, and the pinkish one above is Red Five-corners. We never did find out what the pretty little flower below is called.
Jolimont Lake, in Mabel Talbot Park, is only a few hundred metres in width. So you can walk right around it in five minutes.
Despite its small size, quite a lot of birds come to the lake at different times of the year – including several duck species, herons, egrets, spoonbills, coots, grebes and swans. Informative signs describe some of the birds that you may see. On a recent visit, we saw this family of Australian Wood Ducks out for a swim.
Manning Lake, south of Fremantle, is even smaller than the lakes in our two previous blog entries – the walk around the lake is just over a kilometre in length.
When we were there recently, there were several species of ducks, ibises (below) and a variety of cockatoos and galahs at the lake and its surrounding park. At the park there is also a homestead museum, a vintage machinery museum and a roughish walking trail up to a nearby hilltop.
If the 7.7km walk around Herdsman Lake (featured in yesterday’s blog entry) sounds a bit too far, a great alternative is Lake Monger. This lake is just 5km from Perth centre and has a 3.5km path which goes right around the shore.
There are plenty of waterbirds, including many species of ducks, waterhens, ibises, egrets, herons, spoonbills, swans, coots and so on. Earlier this week we stopped to admire this striking Australasian Shoveler.
