Great Bay, Bruny Island

3/12/2011

Day two started with broken clouds, so we headed to Bruny Island on the first Ferry. We had lots of company, having chosen the day of the Bruny Island Ultra-marathon with a couple of hundred runners and supporters running the 64 kilometres from Dennes Point to the Light House. (Paul Johnson was first to the lighthouse with a time of 5:35:41). We moved at a more leisurely pace, and runners kept passing and re-passing us as we stopped to peer into the roadside trees. At one such stop on Main Road, Great Bay, we pulled up for Dusky Woodswallows on the roadside powerlines, but were diverted by a small green parrot flying up from the lines a little further down. Waiting for it to return we saw Yellow-throated and Black-headed Honeyeaters and Black-faced Cuckooshrikes in the flowering Eucalypts across the road. An Australian Hobby perched briefly on the wires, and Welcome Swallows flew up and down the road verges. The parrot returned and obligingly perched again on the wires; a Blue Winged Parrot.