Saturday, so that means a trip to the Australian Botanical gardens, Mount Annan, to see if I can find a mushroom to shoot for this weeks +ShroomshotSaturday shot.

This week I decided to take advantage of my membership to friends of the gardens which allows me access before the normal opening at 10:00am, so I was able to get in at 7:00 and the light was still good. This allowed for some early morning shots of some of the wild life that’s not so active during the middle of the day, starting off with a mob of Wallabies.

As I was shooting these a Kookaburra was sitting in a gum tree (don’t think it was an old gum tree) looking for his breakfast and diving on any lizards and insects he could find this shot was of him still on the ground.

As I turned around to head further into the gardens about 5 metres away from me was a lone Australian Wood duck, watching me, guess he was seeing what I was up to.

After taking his portrait I went up the hill to the connections gardens where a family of wood ducks were heading down to the lakes for their morning paddle, the light was still good at this time so managed to get them back lit though there front, so some nice light this morning. Worth getting up early for.

The Gardens have abundant bird life and on their web site there’s a bird list to down load (http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/annan/the_garden/wildlife/birds) Just click on their link to down load the list. There about 177 know bird species within the gardens at various times of the year and I’m slowly working my way through the list, so far I’m nearly at the 50% mark so still a way to go yet.

Today I added two more to my list firstly a White‑browed Scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis) In the leave litter in the connections gardens.

I then found a small flock of Gold finches and one was perched high in a Bunya pine, made a nice silhouette against the sky.

From there I walked into the water gardens where the Gardens usually have a good display of Australian Native flowing plant, by now the light wasn’t at its best so had to make do with my own lighting now so out with the speedlite and soft box, where I got a Kangaroo paw and various other native flowering plants.

So far no mushrooms and I thought with all the rain we had in Sydney this week the gardens would be alive with them, but no such luck as yet, so my last change was up on the Wollemi pine walk of discovery where I often find mushrooms so I walked up the hill to the Sundial of Human Involvement and there I found my second new bird of the day to add to my list A Richard's Pipit  (Anthus novaeseelandiae) running along the grass like a little road runner.

From there I went along the Wollemi pine walk of discovery and found a lone mushroom for the week so I didn’t return empty handed.

Here are a few behind the scenes shots as well as the final shot for the day.

Thanks for dropping by.