Sydney Bird Club’s Guide to Your First Binoculars Many years ago, a pair of heavy, star-gazing binoculars opened up new worlds for me. I know it can be daunting to purchase a pair of binoculars, but the enrichment they bring to your birdwatching experiences will last years. You’ll be able to see birds clearly and identify them more easily. You’ll also notice things about birds that you didn’t before like how messy some of their beaks can be! Here are a few things you’ll need to know before you purchase your first pair: 1) It’s a Numbers Game: Every binocular has two numbers listed to describe ..read more

Centennial Park is one of the best places to go birdwatching in Sydney. Two years ago, when we moved here from the U.S. I was most surprised at how integrated the city was with nature. Life in New York meant leaving the city to see nature, often driving a couple of hours to properly be surrounded by trees with enough quiet to properly hear the birds. Here in Sydney there's a lot of wildlife in general, but one of our favorite places to bird watch and one of the best in Sydney is Centennial Park near Paddington. Centennial Park is a huge park with open spaces and a few large ponds. We've found ..read more

"Then slowly we crawled by the trees that kept tally/Of miles that were passed on the long journey down./We saw the wild beauty of Capertee Valley/As slowly we rounded the base of the Crown." - Henry Lawson, from Song of the Old Bullock Driver, 1891. Capertee Valley has a rugged beauty to it that stood out to us even more as we had no phone reception, internet or TV during our stay. It allowed us to just focus on being there and we took full advantage of it. Although it was freezing in the mornings, we bundled up and sat outside on a porch looking out at the valley. No traffic, no airplanes a ..read more

Bird-watcher. A rather ambiguous term used to describe the person who watches birds for any reason at all, and should not be used to refer to the serious birder. - Birding, Volume 1, No. 2 It can seem like splitting hairs, but there are a few different terms used to describe the art of looking at birds. Yep, I just said the art of looking at birds. That's because I believe that like with a canvas and a brush, there are many different approaches to enjoying bird watching and over time people develop their own unique ways of doing it as well as specialties for what they enjoy looking at (I'm ge ..read more

We got back from Capertee Valley recently and boy are my eyes tired. We had a GREAT time and it was a dream come true to visit one of the best birdwatching locations in the world. Capertee Valley is what's known as an IBA which stands for 'Important Bird Area.' There are some 12,000 places in the world with this categorization, but Capertee Valley happens to be in the top 50 best birding locations in the world and only one of two locations in Australia listed in the book: Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die by Chris Santella. In fact, Capertee Valley is home to more species of birds tha ..read more

Last weekend Amy and I had the pleasure of attending birding legend Carol Probet's walk in the Blue Mountains at the Mt. Tomah Botanic gardens. Not many people realize this, but the Botanic Gardens in Sydney have two sister gardens; the cool climate garden in the Blue Mountains and a natives garden at Mt. Annan near Campbelltown. The walk was early in the morning letting us maximize the number of feathers we saw, but since it's Winter it was FREEZING. Even though I grew up in New York, I wore about six layers and my Winter hat like someone born at the equator seeing snow for the first time. C ..read more

Hello and welcome! You might be a Sydneysider just becoming interested in the birds you see, or a tourist looking for a fun, local eco-experience. Maybe you're a pro (in that case, send us tips or your own story) or maybe you're just looking for a little fun in this big giant world of ours. Regardless of how you wound up here, hello and welcome! We are truly grateful you found us.  We're an inclusive social bird club in Sydney, Australia focused on having fun and exploring the natural world around us. We like to pair all our outings with a beer at the pub afterwards to talk about the bir ..read more

When life hands you lemons, it’s best to make lemonade and when life hands you a corona virus it’s time to add a pinch of lime and some salt. Although we spend a lot of our free time going to new places in Sydney and Australia to birdwatch, our favorite outings are when we know a place well enough to call it a local. Just like the pub down our block, we know our neighborhood parks and other birding spots well enough to know what to expect during the seasons. We’re excited during this time to get to know our backyard, our block, and our neighborhood. As long as you keep looking up, there’s qui ..read more

Even though the turn of seasons in Australia is subtle by global measure, each new seasonal chapter still brings change for our corner of the earth. Here in Sydney, as we start grabbing a light jacket on the way out the door in the mornings, a phenomenon is taking place right above us. Autumn begins the great annual honeyeater migration north, beginning late March into April and May lasting between six and eight weeks. Timing, route and numbers migrating depends on a variety of factors, all linked to the general state of things in the south, including flowering, rain, fires and drought. In 20 ..read more

Ahhh …. the sounds of Sydney in the summer: cicadas, party boats in the harbour and loud ‘koo-eee’ calls from overhead. Just like the tourists who flock to our turquoise shores during summer, several birds also make the journey each year from far-flung places to get a glimpse of Sydney Harbour at her finest. The image above and below are of Channel-billed Cuckoos, annual summer visitors from New Guinea/Indonesia and all around (forgive my french), crazy motherf*@%rs. These birds are the largest cuckoos in the world and the largest parasite brood cuckoos. This means that they lay their eggs in ..read more