Victoria – Page 2

Pacific Gull …

I toddled down to Ricketts Point early, it’s good to get there before the dog walkers to the extent that you can. It was cold and very windy. I didn’t see a dog and indeed most of the birds were hunkered down, head into the wind, reluctant to fly. The exception was a young Pacific Gull that was not going to let the weather stop it from repeatedly dropping a mussel from a great height. It was at a bit of a distance and I’m not sure whether it succeeded in smashing it open or the wind carried it into the water.

When it found itself in need of a new mollusc it came quite close to me. I was able to photograph it coming in and while it tried to prise a mussel from a hollow in the rock. While I approved of its choice of mussel it didn’t work well for the gull. After a while it flew off with an empty beak to try further away.

It takes four years for a Pacific Gull to arrive at adult plumage and even then there may be some buff feather margins to give it away as a relative youngster. By my reckoning this is a second year gull. Back in March it would have been browner overall and the bill base would have been white. Now (November) the yellow parts have good colour but the bill tip is near black not red.

The Big Smoke …

Well, Melbourne, anyway.

And when in Melbourne head to Braeside Park which is host to Freckled and Pink-eared Duck and even some Magpie Geese at the moment. Gentle light before the rain that’s now falling. A chance to lie in the wet grass and shoot contre jour at some Pink-ears.

Wallaby …

A walk around Griffiths Island, especially early or late in the day will almost always turn up a few Swamp Wallabies. As long as you don’t go too close they tend to just stand and look at you. Occasionally you might also see an Eastern Grey Kangaroo, they are not so tame. When they’re bounding along Swampies tend to keep their heads low and travel in a horizontal posture. Eastern Greys are more upright.

Despite their name Swamp Wallabies are not regularly found in swamps. An alternative popular name is Black Wallaby but they’re not black. Their scientific name is also a dud Wallabia bicolor since they are rufous, black and cream.

Meet Junior …

Junior is an Australian Pied Oystercatcher that hatched on Griffiths Island. You can tell this is a youngster by the brownish feather margins and relatively subdued colours on legs, bill and eye ring. He or she was probably one of two or three but there has been no trace of siblings over the last few days. Life is hazardous for young birds. Junior is probing for food for themself but is still very ready to accept food from its parents which are still a bit bigger.

When danger threatens Junior pretends to be a bit of seaweed while Mum and Dad run into the open and pipe up a racket, a distraction display.

Around the corner I came across L9. I last saw L9 three years ago and I’m pleased to see them still going strong. They were in a relationship back then but do not seem to be paired up presently. The Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme tell me that L9 was banded on 17th May 2011 and was 3 years or older at the time. (First and second year Oystercatchers can be aged by examination of the pattern of their moult). Banding occurred 288km away. They are now at least 17yrs old.

Mallacoota, the Wrap …

Mallacoota is a visually splendid, isolated town with a resident population of 1,183 in the last census. It is situated on a lake system and surrounded by the forest of Croajingalong National Park. Summer visitors outnumber the locals, they come to fish, bird watch, hike and for the wild flowers. The town is 25km from the Princes Highway via a narrow winding road through the forest.

In late December 2019 a lightning strike in the national park started a fire about 60km from Mallacoota. There may have been 10,000 people in the town at that time. Strong winds and high temperatures were expected in the next few days. Many people left. There were still about 4,000 people there when the road out was closed on the 30th of December.

The fire reached the town on the 31st destroying some homes and businesses. The firestorm was so fierce and the smoke so dense that the small airport could not be used for evacuation or fire suppression. After the fire had passed the roads in its wake were unusable. The Royal Australian Navy commenced evacuation by sea on the 3rd of January.

That would have been a summer holiday never forgotten.

The forest has recovered well as Australian forests will but there are still charred trunks and many dead branches emerging above the canopy. We saw Grey Kangaroos and Red-necked Wallabies and were serenaded of an evening by a male Koala. Goannas were out and about and the birding was good. We spent five nights there before taking a couple of days to drive from the far east of the state to the far west.

Minus 18°B …

This is my (temporary) new way of expressing temperature. In Mallacoota, Vic it’s 5am and 8°C. In Broome, WA, it’s 26°C, Of course it’s only 2am there and the humidity is 77%. So for a Broomite in exile it feels like -18°B. Which is better – snuggled under the doona frightened to come out or lying on top in a lather of sweat?

For those of you who live not far north of the Gulf formerly known as Mexico that’s 46°F, 79°F and feels like -33°B. For those in Canada I apologise for being such a woos. Heading into a winter like yours and living next to the Rufous Doofus it takes a lot of courage to be a Canadian.

Yesterday’s weather (before the very impressive thunder storm) photographed by Gayle McGee …

Meanwhile the long lens has been getting a workout. The Pelicans here are well educated creatures that gather where fishermen gut their catch. They too are feeding chicks.

Braeside Park …

It was the 2nd of April 1989, opening day of the new metropolitan park. It was extremely busy. In I drove through the northern gate. I followed the road which ringed the picnic area. Traffic was nose to tail, moving at a snail’s pace. Each of the carparks were full and having completed the circuit I was decanted back onto Lower Dandenong Road. I found a carpark at the second attempt.

In the early days I coordinated bird counts in the park and I was involved in a long running banding project. The bird list grew apace. A walk around the park’s 310ha (770 acres) would yield about 50 species in about 3 hours at a bird watcherly pace. According to eBird the list now stands at 188 species.

Braeside Park is one of the first places I head to when back in Melbourne. The number of bird watchers is up, the number of bird species is down. Many of the birdos are carrying cameras with very long lenses. It seems that the advances in photography have attracted many more people to the hobby.

The decline in species is probably due to a number of causes. There has been considerable development surrounding the park. Previously raptors such as Swamp Harrier could range over the park and extensive grasslands outside the fence. Now they just have the park which may not be enough for full time habitation. In addition Melbourne has had a very dry summer which may have caused some species to go looking elsewhere. And it’s autumn, the summer migrants have gone.

Nonetheless the park remains an outstanding place to watch birds.

Melbourne …

A simplified map of the road trip so far looks like this …

There is a considerable discrepancy between the distance shown on the map and the trip metre in the car which stands at more than 15,000km. Simplification does that sort of thing. We have been exploring!

Marvelous Melbourne is where I spent the largest part of my working life, it’s where my small family lives and it’s also en route to becoming the most populous city in Australia and bankrupt. Each to his or her own, I can see many advantages to living in Broome, beautiful beaches, little traffic, warm winters but of course there’s a but. Medical facilities are very limited. Getting to see a doctor takes ages and you’re unlikely to see the same doctor twice. Anything sophisticated is a 2000km journey to Perth. Melbourne continues to be where I take care of the routine side of my medical care. I’ll be here until my new glasses are ready.

Meanwhile it’s great to catch up with my family and my friends and to go birding in old haunts such as Braeside Park and Phillip Island. The year list is up to 274 species (safe until October 1 in the calendar game but finding new birds is getting much harder).

Statistics …

As I recall Statistics is something you can do with independent observations taken at random and assembled into a sufficiently large sample. It’s a dark art, lies, damn lies and statistics etc. Bird watching stretches it even further into the kingdom of the devil. Bird watchers choose their sites to generate large lists, large list are more fun. Will we turn left or right? Depends where the Red Goshawk’s nest is or the owl’s roost. It’s called bias. Bird watching and citizen science make for a turbulent marriage

The year list is coming along very nicely, thank you for asking. Bird watchers tend to disparage introduced species, the plastics, but we do make sure to get them on our lists. If numbers give you an inner glow then they all count. I have my Goldfinch for the year. Port Fairy is very good for Goldfinch. But where is my Greenfinch? If I don’t get it here I am unlikely to get it this year.

Port Fairy is also a very good place to find the Striated Fieldwren. They live in rank vegetation and low scrub. In spring the males get up on rocks or taller plants and sing their little hearts out. The rest of the time they are a challenge. It’s not spring but this visit they have been very cooperative. I even have photographs! (Notice they all face to the left, n=2, the sample size is too small, p is nowhere near significant).

That thing they do with their tail is very endearing. Shame the one in the better light didn’t do it.

Port Fairy is not only famous for Fieldwrens it is also home of the Port Fairy Folk Festival. Secombe Park has been transformed into a reasonable facsimile of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The town benefits greatly from the revenue raised. Fortunately I will have left before the festivities reach full swing.

Just over a day to find the furtive finch. I haven’t connected with the snipe either, it may be too late in the season for them. I may have to come back in the spring. But the birding has been excellent …

Flitting About …

Yesterday we arrived in Port Fairy on Victoria’s south west coast and here we shall pause for a week . We will taking bracing walks in what passes for the summer heat and look for goldfinch and greenfinch to bolster our year list! Here is a simplified map of progress since Wilcannia. Simplified because since crossing the Victorian border we have been flitting about like flies on a cow pat visiting favourite places, favourite people and a caravan repair yard for a bit of plumbing work.

Rainfall in the interior of Australia and much of the west coast is unpredictable and usually sparse. For the north and east coastal fringes, north of Brisbane, summer rainfall is the norm. From Brisbane south and around the south coast and for a triangle in the south of Western Australia winter rainfall predominates. This pattern has held up on this trip, indeed it may be somewhat exaggerated this year. Since leaving Queensland the country has been as dry as a chip.

In Wilcannia the bird watcher should stay at Warrawong on the Darling. The camp ground is adjacent to a couple of billabongs. These are usually productive but on this occasion one had little water and the other was dry. The river Darling itself had plenty. There are some 4WD tracks across open plains to patches of River Red Gum woodlands along the banks and if clean toilets and warm showers are of any interest it even has those.

From there it was on to the banks of the mighty Murray not far from Mildura and then various much loved locations in the Victorian Goldfields. And now Port Fairy which is unique in Victoria in very nearly being quaint. The surrounding countryside, the Western District of Victoria, is brown and dry, drier than we have ever seen it.

There is a Short-tailed Shearwater colony in Port Fairy and I’ve just got back from watching the Shearwater parents returning to feed their chicks. They come in just after dark, land near their burrows and then run to the waiting chicks. It is a wonderful experience to sit in the colony and have them flying in around you.