August 1

I slept in until 9:00 since my first class was cancelled. On my way to class today, I decided to throw my camera in my backpack, in hopes that the white-faced herons (two) would be foraging in the lawn beside the sidewalk.Typically you can walk within 15 feet of these guys and they just keep foraging. I didn't have too much free time, but I managed to get my camera out and get a photo of the one heron that was present today. I had my camera in a low-quality mode, so it didn't turn out real good, but it's still a pretty nice picture of this really neat bird.

On my way back from my last class of the day, I looked down the hill a little bit to the right of the sidewalk to see if there were kangaroos in the field. I have seen a couple here before, so I was hoping there would be some and I would be able to get some pictures. I wasn't disappointed, as I saw a total of 3 kangaroos in the field. I managed to get some rather distant pictures, but you can easily tell in the shots that they are kangaroos. Pretty neat.

After I got back to my room I changed and went to go for a run. Two birds with this loud grating squawking flew over. They looked all dark, and rather cockatoo-like. I haven't seen any black cockatoos yet, and there are several species. I will have to wait to see some up close before I can tell what they were. I ran around Lake Ginninderra again today, completing the loop in 30:50 today, my fastest time so far. I didn't feel like I was running too hard though. I must be starting to get into shape. My heel hurt a little bit at one point, but not too bad. I'm going to take tomorrow off since I have class all day on Wednesdays anyway, and it would be hard to get a run in. On my run I ended up spotting a group of 5 Australian pelicans on the water near shore. I stopped along the lake where the pelicans, black swans, black ducks, and coots and moorhens were all right by the shore, and I managed to get as close as 40 feet from the pelicans. I've never been that close to any pelicans before, American or Australian, and it was really neat. They had huge pinkish bills, white necks and lower bodies, and then black on their backs. I wished I had a camera that was small enough to carry with me while I run because I could have gotten some excellent photos! After observing the pelicans for a few minutes, I continued my run. I stopped once later in the run because a dozen or two red-rumped parrots were foraging alongside the path. Some of them flew up into a bush only ten or fifteen feet away, so I watched four of them interacting with each other for a minute before continuing my run. Again, I wished I had a camera.

I might do some homework tonight. Oh, I was in the book store on campus today, and I saw this one book that I couldn't pass up taking a photo of. Anybody who's seen the movie What About Bob will appreciate it. :)