A TRIP TO THE BLUE MOUNTAINS DAY 2: THE HOTEL AND SCENIC WORLD

After a long night drive, I woke up with my father at 6:30 am to bird the area around the front of the hotel. It was rather disappointing, and I only spotted pied currawongs, crimson rosellas, Australian magpies, Pacific black ducks and Australian wood ducks. We only explored the front though, and we hadn't checked out the more birdy-looking back area of the hotel. We decided to do this later, because we had to get to one of the birding sites suggested on the internet for superb lyrebirds: Scenic World.

Crimson rosellas. The bird on the left is an adult, the bird on the right is going from juvenile to adult plumage (juveniles are mostly green)

This popular tourist attraction had a boardwalk where, according to a website, 'in the morning you are guaranteed to see lyrebirds, but do not come too late because there will be too many people.' Perhaps we came too late, but either way I accidentally went along the wrong track and we did not see any lyrebirds. However, we did see lots of sulphur-crested cockatoos, two grey shrike-thrushes and some unidentified small birds in the top of a eucalyptus tree. Though there were probably rose robins, yellow-faced honeyeaters and white-naped honeyeaters up there somewhere, I was too tired to look and the birds were too fast. We turned back and, now too tired to continue, decided to just enjoy the rides.

The less steep part of the Scenic Railway track

First we tried the Scenic Railway, the world's steepest passenger railway with a 52 degree incline. In the railway, which passes through a natural tunnel, you can adjust your seats to make it less or more scary. Unknowingly I adjusted the seat to 'Cliffhanger', with a 64 degree incline so you were looking straight down. With a woosh I almost fell out of my seat as gravity pulled at me. Note to self: if returning, be more careful with seat. Then we rode on the cableway and skyway to look at the Three Sisters and other parts of the surrounding area. We saw a few more sulphur-crested cockatoos, which looked like white blobs with wings from above. One perched and I could just make out the yellow blur of its crest. Soon we had to go home, and after having lunch we headed for the hotel and had a swim in the pool. At 5 o'clock we watched TV before having dinner and going to sleep.