Parry's Beach

Visited: spring

Recommendation: This lovely campsite is worth visiting just to see Splendid Fairywren on the beach. Explore further and you might find co-operative Carnaby's Black Cockatoo. Definitely worth checking out.

Parry's Beach Campsite is a low cost council site further west and again right on the beach. I keep thinking the places I visit cannot get more beautiful but Western Australia delivers every time. The bay is just stunning and you can walk east to the inlet which leads inland to a fairly inaccessible lagoon. To the west is another, smaller bay which you can get to over rocks along the shore or heath further inland.

I didn't think it would get any better but as I walked through the bush and flowering scrub, I saw lots of them. They were pretty tolerant of me and it was an incredible birding experience to walk amongst them.

There are 2 endemic black cockatoo in Western Australia, the Carnaby's and the Baudin's. Superficially they are very similar and difficult to tell apart unless you have been around them enough to distinguish between their only subtly different calls. They do live in different habitat and that was my first clue. I also knew their bills are different so I made sure I got some clear shots. While the Carnaby's bill has a short upper mandible, the Baudin's is longer. These are the Carnaby's. Next job is to catch up with the Baudin's.

To my surprise, later in the day I found Splendid Fairywren on the beach apparently looking for bugs. I could hear the fairywren calling everywhere and the Splendids were visible in lots of places. But the beach? There were several males hopping around close by and they weren't too bothered about me. I actually had to step back to get this second bird in focus.

On the beach I spotted some small things running around the beach. It has been a long time since I crawled on my stomach to get close to waders and I was delighted to have to do it here. I could see straight away that it was a group of Red-necked Stint. Not in breeding colours so the red neck was pretty much absent. Still very attractive. One bird stood out because it was bigger and paler - a Sanderling. A very pretty wader. They were feeding along the shoreline darting in and out amongst the waves and digging out bugs from the wet sand. They were very tolerant of me although I did have to wave away some walkers with dogs. They must have thought me a bit mad!

Also on the shore were the 2 species of oystercatcher in Australia - the pied and sooty. They seemed to be in competition with each other to see who could dig up the biggest worm. 

This last picture is interesting because it shows the size difference between the oystercatcher and the stint. The oystercatcher is about as big as a fat feral pigeon. It demonstrates how small the waders are! Parry's Beach really turned it on for me.