Bird Life in the local area’s of Nyngan, Trangie, Narromine, Dubbo and Wellington

Images of the ‘Sacred Kingfisher’ at Nyngan

The ‘Bird Life’ captured in these images were taken on the latter part of the Mollymook swimmers Western NSW tour, specifically at Nyngan, Trangie, Narromine, Dubbo and Wellington. Prominent in the stories and advertising relating to these specific area’s was the ‘Sacred Kingfisher’ bird. I had never heard of, nor seen this particular bird before. My first stop on this section of the trip was at Nyngan. Nyngan is a rural centre situated on the Mitchell Highway astride the Bogan River on the eastern edge of the Great Outback and has some beautiful river walks and park land on both sides of the Bogan. I spent about an hour at this location early to mid morning. The bird life was quite prolific and as I was finishing photographing and wandering back to my car there sat on my vehicle’s outside rear vision mirror this magnificent coloured bird. So pretty! It soon took off and parked in one of the nearby trees where I was able to get a variety of images as per the above, of this ‘Sacred Kingfisher’.

Wikipedia: “The sacred kingfisher is a medium-sized woodland kingfisher that occurs in mangroves, woodlands, forests, and river valleys in Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of the western Pacific”.

I wish to credit Charles Dove for his help in identifying some of these birds. He has been very helpful in getting me started in the photography of ‘Bird Life’. (Click on images to enlarge)

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Nyngan Bird Life images

Australian Wood duck

Common Blackbird

White plumed Honeyeater

Common Myna

Magpie Lark

Noisy miner

Red Rumped Parrots: Female on left and Male on right

White Faced Heron

Little Friabird

Willie Wagtail

Trangie Bird Life images

The small village of Trangie has a parkland and ‘Marsh’ on its eastern side called ‘Argonauts Park – Goan Waterhole. The following images are from this ‘Marsh’ and parkland area. Signage again highlights the ‘Sacred Kingfisher’ amongst a number of other species common to this general area. Prolific in these western area’s are Galah’s and Sulphur Crested Cockatoo’s.

Australian White Ibis

Galah

Sulphur Crested Cockatoo

Australian Raven

Noisy Miner

Narromine Bird Life images

Adjacent to the town of Narromine is the Rotary Wetland on the bank’s of the Macquarie River. Here I met two lady ‘Twitcher’s’ with their binoculars. We got talking and they said that they had travelled up from Dubbo looking to observe a ‘Sacred Kingfisher’. I excused myself and sat on a nearby table to check emails on my laptop and it wasn’t long before they got my attention, a ‘Sacred Kingfisher’ was perched in a nearby tree. Being a real amateur, I still had not connected it with the beautiful bird I photographed back in Nyngan. They showed me the app by ‘Pizzy & Knight’ that lists all birds, images and information and took me to the ‘Sacred Kingfisher’, the penny dropped and I realised it was the bird I had been photographing earlier.

Here in Narromine I photographed this Little Friabird (see below) for the first time.

Little Friabird

Red Browed Finch

Rufous Songlark

Sacred Kingfisher

Sulphur crested Cockatoo’s

Dubbo Bird Life images

The two lady ‘Twitcher’s’ I met at Narromine encouraged me to spend some time at Dubbo, specifically along the bank’s of the Macquarie River. In all the years I have travelled out west I have never stopped nor spent time in Dubbo, it had appeared to me as just a big country town. On this occasion I pulled up along the Macquarie at the ‘Tracker Riley Cycleway and walkway’ and was absolutely astounded at the amount of bird life and beautiful walkways along the river bank. Here I photographed for the first time a ‘Common Starling’. (See pic below) Again the Galah’s and Sulphur Crested Cockatoo’s were prolific.

Common Starling-male

Galah

Sulphur crested cockatoo

Red rumped parrot female-above & male-below

Willie Wagtail

Red rumped parrot female-above & male-below

Red rumped parrot male

Superb Fairy wren-female

Superb Fairy wren-male

Wellington Bird Life images

At Wellington I found the best area for bird photography on either side of the Bell River adjacent to the main street rather than down stream where the Bell and Macquarie join. It was here that I (the absolute amateur) was introduced to ‘Noisy Friabird’ (see pic below) as well as some other varieties such as; Straw necked Ibis and of course another ‘Sacred Kingfisher’.