A Rat's Nest

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I've been quiet for the last few days since the one Perth post a few days ago but I've done no real birding since then and have just been resting with family. The extended family who live in Perth as well as my brother and parents who have also been here. My brother and parents got to Perth when I was in Darwin so have spent quite a while here, and they have strange responsibilities like going back to work before the end of the month and my brother has to go back to school. School, imagine that. I don't do that sort of stuff anymore.

So my parents and brother are flying back to Europe today, with their flight this evening, so this morning I got them to drop me off at the Fremantle Jetty before they go to go on a trip to Rottnest Island. Rottnest is the island that is know for its Quokkas and it's good for birding as well. I've been to Rottnest a couple of times in the past, with my visit two years ago being for proper birding, but I really like the place and this time I'm doing something that I've not done before and really wanted to, so I'm spending the night this time. I'm just spending one night, but I'm getting a morning boat then an evening boat so two full days which I think is plenty to thoroughly explore the island. There are expensive luxury chalets on the island, which I'm not staying at of course, but there's a dorm too where I'm staying with a dorm bed for $50 Australian per night. (A bit more than €30 or a bit less than £30). That's very expensive for a night in a dorm, but it is Australia and there's obviously a limited market of accommodation on Rottnest Island. There is a camp ground which is actually the cheapest accommodation on the island, but you'd need your own equipment and tent and such.

Just for reference, the return ferry between Perth and Rottnest is $75 Australian so given that cost of a day trip, a one night two day stay seemed like by far the best option. The ferry across was a bit choppy due to being a slightly windy morning, but it's a big boat so it wasn't very rocky. The boat is quite good for spotting pelagic seabirds and I saw a could of interesting species. You can't miss the quokkas on Rottnest, if you were blind I imagine you'd trip over one so I saw those as soon as I do off the boat.

I decided that today it was worth getting a $20 hop-on-hop-off bus ticket to go some of the further parts of the islands so I got the bus to visit the seal view point on the far side of the island. The island is a decent side with the Eastern (inland) side of the island being where all the facilities are as well as being the much larger, wider side with the remnant forest and lakes which is where the good birding is. This was the only part of the island I had done in the past.

Going away from the wide, Eastern side of the island out to sea in the West the island is about 13km long and only about 200m wide covered entirely in heath. I hadn't been down here before on my day trips since I had to focus on birding, but with two days I got the bus to look at the sea lion colony at Cathedral Rocks which I had wanted to see. There were about a hundred sea lions, mostly New Zealand Fur Seals on the rocks and in the water but also a couple for Australian Sea Lions hauled out. The Fur Seals were a lifer so that's cool.

There were lots of seabirds too, terns and gannets and things, and some proper pelagics too, although they are mostly too far out to identify without a scope. Nice view of the ocean and the bare heathland. No sign of cetaceans though although dolphins apparently like surfing the massive breakers at the far Western point. The area here also had a few burrows of breedomg Wedge-tailed Shearwaters which was on of the species I identified at sea

The buses do a loop around the island that takes about an hour and they come every half hou so it's a good way to get around and by doing a full loop at the start of the visit, I could get a good first look at everything. The other option is to hire a bike but I didn't fancy that with all my gear. I spent an hour and a half at West Point then got the bus back, by which point I could check into the dorm.

On the bus going back on one of the lakes, I noticed that one side had hundreds of banded stilts which was great since on my previous visit there were only one or two rather than 'rafts'. The dorm accommodation is 1.8kn away from the main settlement in Kingstown Barracks and the dorms are a row of 12 bed dorms that were the old army barracks. You have to pay extra for linen but I knew this so brought a sleeping bag. There was one other person staying in the dorm I was in, which is more than I had expected really although two people in a 12 bed dorm is hardly crowded.

I then went out to get some food where the biggest challenge was not getting food, but keeping it since I bought a pizza from a small shop to eat outside and I was instantly mobbed by gulls and ravens as well as a couple of quokkas on the ground hoping to charm their way into getting food by sitting on my bag and poking my legs with their noses. The gulls however, went with a considerably more aggressive method and one gull actually flew at me and grabbed half a piece of pizza out of my hand which is quite amusing, but did mean I had to move because as soon as one gull got some food, hundreds of other immidiately descended.

I went for a walk around the lakes in the afternoon looking for birds of course and I found most of the key Rottnest birds but not the Rock Parrot or Banded Lapwing and I couldn't refind the raft of banded stilts that I had seen from the bus. The most distinctive Rottnest bird for me must be the White-fronted Chat since they're such cool birds which are common on Rottnest but I've never seen anywhere else and they're actually a species in the honeyeater family!

Around sunset, I got a really cool sighting as I was walking along a coastal path looking for Rock Parrots when I saw a group of three Bottlenosed Dolphins feeding on the reef just below me surfacing and going back down for about ten minutes just of the coast right where I was watching which was really cool.

Rottnest Island becomes extremely quiet after the last ferry leaves at 4:30 and at dusk hundreds of quokkas all start to come out. The settlement has a few tame quokkas during the day, but after all the people have gone the central area just fills up with quokkas. The only other "land" mammal on Rottnest also comes out at this time which are a few White-striped Freetail Bats that live around the settlement. It's worth noting that this bat is a species with audible echolocation sonar (and the only one with audible sonar that occurs in the area).

I walked back to the hostel in the dark and there were lots of quokkas everywhere, but there isn't really anything to spotlight on the island. I thought there might possibly be owls around, most likely would be boobooks, but I couldn't hear any so I don't know if they occur on the island. I established in Darwin that they don't exist anyway. Apart from the seven species that I've seen + several heard so far on this trip of course.

It's quite nice staying on the island and I think worth the relatively expensive dorm, especially given the ferry cost anyway. Although I don't know how they'd cope if all three 12-bed dorms were full with a single shower. With two people that's not a problem of course.

(I'll do a new birds/mammals list for the whole Rottnest trip in tomorrow's post)

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