Centennial Park Birdwatch

A week or so ago, Mira and I went out on our bikes to explore this gigantic park that is very close to where we live. Mira had gone there once on her Bike Babes outing so she knew how to get there. The day was rainy, but we were determined, plus we had a pile of stale bread to give to the water fowl. It was such a quick, pleasant ride on bike paths the whole way, and the park is so huge and very pretty. There was almost no one there due to the poor weather and the fact that it was a week day, so it felt like we were really out in nature.

First we saw some coots that at first we thought were cute (little rhyme there), but then we realized that they were "going all agro" on the ducks and we said "what the heck"?

No, seriously, feeding birds is not a sweet, kind, peaceful activity. We saw ducks, swans, cockatoos, pigeons, geese, the aforementioned coots, and various other birds, and they were all after our small supply of bread. It didn't help that we discovered some of it was moldy and had to be thrown out. We got some hilarious photos of me running from a huge black swan that was after a nibble.

Just as we finished our good deed and all the bread was gone, it started to rain and we realized that there were no shelters in sight. We hopped on our bikes an rode till we finally came to a big gazebo type thing. We waited out the rain with one of the park gardeners and a couple of magpies that terrified Mira. They can be aggressive, but I think he was too wet to move.

There was a break in the clouds just long enough to get home where we had tea and dried out.

(if you click on any photo, you can see them in much more detail).