Is this a pair of Australian Shelduck?  I am not sure.

Black swan is my favorite among the different types of birds in Australia.  The Black Swan is the only entirely black-coloured swan in the world.  The combination of its red bill and black feathers looks great.

As I told you earlier, the emblem / logo for the Perth City has 2 black swans on it.

[The common name ‘Swan‘ is a gender neutral term, but ‘cob‘ for a male and ‘pen‘ for a female are also used, as is ‘cygnet‘ for the young.  Collective nouns include a ‘bank‘ (on the ground) and a ‘wedge‘ (in flight).  Black Swans can be found singly, or in loose companies numbering into the hundreds or even thousands.] - from Wikipedia.

First I thought this red bill bird (smaller than an adult black swan) is a young black swan, but after I looked carefully on its legs and claws, I know that it is NOT a black swan.  I ran very quickly while I was taking its photos.

Do you know that the black swan is vegetarian?  It does not have sharp and long claws to catch fish or other victims as its food.  It usually eats algae and weeds.  Black swan’s feet are similar to a duck’s feet.

If you want to know more about black swans, you can read here.

This pelican was about a few hundreds meters away from me.  I zoomed to the maximum at 560mm on my camera but it still looked small in the photo.

I have no choice but cropped it as below.

I only found one pelican at Lake Monger.  And this is the second time I saw a real pelican.  The first time, I saw pelicans in KL Bird Park.

I like to see pelican with big bill.  I have read a story by Roald Dahl - “The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me”.  In this story the pelican can use its big bill to carry a human. :O

This is a seagull.  It has black and white feather.  I like to see seagull flying.  Although it looks small in size while it is resting, but its wing could be longer than I expected while it opens wide.

I hope next time I can spend longer time at Lake Monger to take the photos of a seagull flipping its wing while it lands on the water.

While I was facing the lake, far away on my left there was a lonely bird standing on a water level ruler looking at the lake.  It did not move at all for at least 15 minutes.  Did this bird feel too proud or sad?  I guess it might be too proud to join other birds as friends and was waiting for its partner to come.

A pair of fat birds were sitting under the tree.

Another pair of 1.6 meter tall love birds taking picture of themselves.  :P

Everything looked perfect at Lake Monger, the sky was blue, the bird’s calls sounded nice, black swans and other birds swam happily in the water while many other were resting under the shade of the palm trees.  There is something I almost forget to tell you.

Look at the picture below.

It is smelly at Lake Monger especially at the “beach” of the birds.  If I am not mistaken this feces was produced by a black swan.  I was surprised by the “quantity” it produced.

Generally, this place is still visitable although there is some bad smell in the air.

I found that there is somewhere at Lake Monger which looks like a beach for birds.  Under the palm tree, it is the shade for many birds resting there.  The birds tried to keep themselves away from the direct sunshine in the hot February.

Most of the birds were looking towards the lake just like a beach that is full of people.  They might be looking at their friends, family or their kids (there were many little birds swimming in the lake).

Lake Monger is a large urban wetland situated about 5 km at North of the city of Perth, alongside the Mitchell Freeway.  The lake itself has the size of 70 hectares (173 acres) and adds up with 43 hectares (106 acres) of parkland.  The whole area :- 113 hectares (279 acres) is known as Lake Monger Reserve.

The lake is encircled by a 3.5 km paved walking / cycling track.  Besides birdwatching and “lake-watching”, it is a good place for exercise and picnic.  There are also playground and barbecue facilities provided here.

While I was watching the birds swimming steadily in the lake, a group of big birds suddenly ran at high speed on the water surface.  Were they rushing to fight for food, or they found me and scared themselves away or they were having their fun time?  From what I have read about black swam, they need to run for 40 meters on the water before they can “take off”.  However, I did not notice any of the black swan flying tall in the sky.

A reed island was constructed south west corner of the lake in the 1960s to provide a summer refuge for birds.

Among the birds, I can only recognize black swans, seagulls, pelicans but not the rest.

In the lake, I could see many black dots.  They look like cute little ducklings.

An idea came into my mind.  What happen if the lake were full of birds.  Would it look great or it looks terrible?

There is a well beside the lake.  This is the second well I found in Perth.  The wells in Perth are always decorated with steel bar on top of the wells.  I found the other well at Kings Park, Perth.

“Let nature feet itself” means do no fee the birds.  But I still saw people feeding birds there.

Coming up, I will show you the close up photos of birds that I have taken at Lake Monger.

The Western Australia Maritime Musuem - Shipwreck Gallery is located at Fremantle (a port city located 19 kilometres southwest of Perth).  This gallery is recognized as the foremost maritime archaeology museum in the southern hemisphere.

The most interested thing that I have found in Shipwreck Gallery is this Batavia Gallery.  It displays the reconstructed remains of the Batavia - (a ship of the VOC - Dutch East India Company) which was excavated by archaeologists in the 1970s.

The ship is also visible from the upper floor.  Although it is not a complete piece of ship, but it is still quite big.

Can you imagine how big this ship was?

The body of the ship was made of wood.

SiewPeng and Colin were standing next to Batavia.

The cannon is placed not far from the ship.  I guess that it must be found on the ship.

This big anchor is hanged beside the Batavia.

There are many other relics which were found on Batavia.

This set of skeleton is labelled with “One of the first Europeans in Australia. - A victim of the Batavia mutiny.”

We continued our visit on another section in the gallery.  It has a window with blue sky outside.  What was I waiting for?  I quickly pointed my camera to the window and clicked on the shutter button.

Colin, SiewPeng and the window at ShipWreck Gallery.

From the upper floor, I could see the information counter down there.  When we entered this gallery we were welcomed by the staffs and asked for donations as entrance fee.  We handed the money to her and she gave back the exactly amount of smaller notes and coins, and we put some $2 coins into a box as told by the staff.

I also found that there is a section with information leaflet for visitors with a donation box beside labelled with  ”20 cents for each piece” or something similar.

SiewPeng and Colin in Shipwreck Gallery.

We entered another section which is called SS Xantho Gallery.

[Xantho was originally built during this period of transition from side paddles to screws (screw propeller). I. K. Brunel’s historic screw-driven steamship Great Britain was built in 1843, five years before the side-paddle Xantho was launched. By the time Xantho ended up in the hands of the Glasgow scrap dealer, side-paddle steamers were pretty much obsolete.]  - taken from Western Australian Museum website.

SS Xantho was sank on 1872.

This is the engine of Xantho that the musuem had tried to restore.

SiewPeng and Colin and the Xantho engine.

The anchor in our background is the one near the entrance of this gallery behind the information counter.  It is huge and hanged from the upper floor to the ground floor.  Can you scroll up and find the photo of this anchor which I have taken from the upper floor?

As we know, usually in a museum or gallery, we may not be allowed to take photos.  I have asked one of the friendly staffs and she said it’s alright to take photos there.   Thanks to them and in return I write this post here, I hope to attract more visitors to this gallery.  If you are interested to see more about shipwreck, you should pay a visit to this Shipwreck Gallery at the corner of Cliff St and Marine Terrace, Fremantle, Western Australia.

These are the artworks found in Piney Lakes Reserve.  They appear randomly along the woodland path.  Some of them were placed or even hanged on trees.  Each of them is labelled with a metal plate, stated the artists, title and material used to make them.

This bird with red bill is taller than a human.

The eyeless pig look really muddy.  From the label I got the following information:- “Pig 2006″ by Susan Flavell, Piney Lakes was originally the site of a piggery. The material used was steel frame and cement render.

It is a big snake.  It is located quite a distance from the walking path.  When I first look at it from far away, I thought it is a big hose or something like dinosaur.

Do you know what types of birds they are representing?

“Cat Snake” on the tree.

The “cat snake” were sleeping of one of my favorite trees.  This tree has fair and smooth skin.

“Smoko Break”.

It looks like a huge red drill bit.

This is the most horrifying.  A human with unknown gender and a pair of wings was hung on the tree.  The body was covered pattern of circles and curves.

Is this a flower?

I did not take all the artworks photos nor take down the information about each artwork.  I just show you a few of them and you can go there as a visitor to have a look.  My purpose here to show you is just to introduce and tell you what have I seen in the reserve.  If any issue involve copyright has been raised, I am happy to take down these photos.

To the artists of these artworks: You have created great things that added the attraction to the reserve.  I hope my post here is not considered as stealing your artwork, but another way to introduce your piece of great work to the world and lead visitors to the reserve.  :D

Trees can be very tall.
They can touch the sky.
The trunks and roots are their legs.
The branches are their hands.
The leaves are their eyes and ears.

This tree produces the following seed.

The seeds look like a gasing (means spinning tops in Malay)

there are also other types of seeds.

The trees can be  great artists.  They always hide their artistic lines around them.  If you look around carefully, you will be able to discover them.

Although some of the trees have come to the end of their lives.  The shape of their trunk will still show their artistic beauty for decades, hundreds of years or even thousands of years.

There is a hole in this trunk.  I wish there was a rabbit like the one mentioned in a fairy tale staying inside and say hello to me.  But I wouldn’t know how I am going to react if this happened.

They might also turn themselves into a good place for mosses to grow onto.

Big and small branches on the trees look like roads and streets.

If you have studied Biology, you would know that there is a transport system in plants.  The water is transported from root to leaves by xylem, and the organic nutrients generated by photosynthesis (particularly sucrose is transported to all parts of the plant where needed by phloem.

The transport system in a tree must be very complicated and there are many junctions.  But I don’t think a traffic light nor a flyover bridge is needed for them to have a proper transport system.

Headless tree. :O

This tree needs skin care.

A tree couple.  They may be sharing the same roots.

This tree has soft branches.  Its hands look like girls’ soft hands and fingers, dancing gently in the sky.

Some of the trees have simple branches, some have complicated branches.

This tree was bleeding.  The latex in light brown is its blood.  The latex was dried in the air, but I don’t think the tree will stopped bleeding.  I did not touch it, it might be poisonous or cause skin problems.

If I am not mistaken, this is the maple tree.  Some of the leaves have dried and turned brown.  In autumn, it will turn into the colour of falls.  The whole tree will have ‘red hair’.

If you have discovered more interesting things about trees, don’t forget to tell me.  Hope you enjoyed this post.  :)