Swan Bay

Swan Bay is a place we visited that required driving through the area of the bush fire, as seen in the earlier post. Out by the water, it was very, very quite. The road  led along a small residential neighborhood on the landward side and the water on the other.

The tide was out and there was a large mudflat. We hoped this would mean shore birds, but alas, there were none. Nevertheless, it was a great place. We sat in the ute and ate our sandwich for lunch.

I tried to get photos of the small crabs that were scurrying about the mud, but when I went out to get closer, they all hid. So, I can't show the only sort of life out there. there was a large blue bottle that had been stranded on the sand, but that's not so interesting as actual live, crawling crabs. But it was not to be.

We did have some luck on the road out to the beach. This road, almost as soon as we left the Pacific Highway, dropped to one paved lane down the middle of a road with gravel shoulders. Then it widened back to a regular road and then went unpaved altogether and finally a the end by the water it was paved again. Interesting place. Anyway, back to our better luck.

There was a place along the gravel section of the road where we found a pair of Sacred Kingfishers on the prowl.

In the above photo, the bright sun and backlit image make it hard to tell that he is bright blue with a tiny bit of green/greenish-blue on the back.

You can just almost make out the lighter spot (here it seems a light brown) on his forehead. This bird is called "scared" since it is thought to be considered holy by the Polynesians who believed it had control over the waves. This seems a little odd to me since it a woodland bird. Anyway, it is a spectacular bird to see.