Booderee Botanic Gardens

Visited: Autumn

Recommendation: There are many spots within and around the national park to explore and the wildlife is abundant. Wandering quietly around these area can yield bristlebird, thrushes and black cockatoo. The photography opportunties are also very good with small bush birds, reptiles and even echidna found out in the open.

Booderee Botanical Gardens is within the Booderee National Park in the southern part of the headland to the south of Jervis Bay. You have to pay to get in but it is not expensive and there are lots of options on where to go. We went to the Botanic Gardens and while there were some trees and plants labelled with their names, the majority of the area was a rambling variety of rainforest, lawn, lake and boardwalk sections. 

We didn't have to wait long for the excitement to begin. Even as we were getting out of the campervan, we could hear black cockatoo flying overhead. The flash of red tail feathers confirmed they must be Glossy Black-Cockatoo and it was all on! I have been looking for these birds for months and now they were here, I had to photograph these lifers.

Glossy Black-Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus lathami)

After following them down into some casuarina trees. The Glossy Black-Cockatoo is a very picky eater. They have a highly specialized diet and feed almost exclusively on the seeds of she-oaks (also called casuarinas). These are trees native to Australia and there are many species of she-oak. Glossy Black-Cockatoos will eat the seeds from at least nine different ones throughout their range.  In some areas, they'll even show a preference for just one or two particular she-oak species. 

The male bird is all black with red tail feathers while the female is black with rather unusual yellow splotches on her face. We watched them eat, then come down to drink in a puddle. They flew a little way into the forest and sat up above us preening and interacting. Photography was challenging but I was really pleased to see them at all!

After that excitement, it was a stroll through the gardens picking up some bush birds. Eastern Yellow Robin were common and on the lawns of the amphitheatre were firetails and fairywrens. It was a very pleasant place to be and see such little birds chattering away to each other. 

The real find of the day was a Short-beaked Echidna. We have been on the look out for these wonderful creatures for months and have only had glimpses of them disappearing into the bush. This animal was very tolerant of us. If we didn't get too close, it was quite content to go about its business digging through the soil looking for insects. At times it even walked towards us. We watched in awe for about an hour until it finally left the track and vanished into the undergrowth.

Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus)

Just as we were coming down from the excitement of the echidna, we were lamenting the absence of reptiles. Early on the walk, I had turned a corner to see a Red-bellied Black Snake on the track and just about jumped out of my skin. I was not really sorry to not see any more. However, we did find a good sized Jacky Dragon. 

The Jacky Dragon, also known as the Blood-sucker, Stonewalker, or Tree Dragon, is a lizard native to south eastern Australia. There are no documented reasons for its name but it was one of the first lizards found by Europeans and it could have come from an adaptation of an Indigenous name. Anyway, we think they are pretty cool and are always happy to photograph them.