Herdsman and Lake Monger, Western Australia

Yellow-billed spoonbill

Herdsman Lake and nearby Lake Monger are in Perth and are an essential first stop for any birder visiting Perth. Between them today they produced ten lifers for me starting with yellow-billed spoonbill not far from the visitor centre at Herdsman. In total I saw six spoonbills, and most were in breeding plumage, with black plumes in their wings, as you can see in the photo above.

Moving on, the lifers came thick and fast, next was a much sought after buff-banded rail, followed by red-winged fairy-wren, splendid fairy-wren, yellow-rumped thornbill, western gerygone, Australian reed warbler and perhaps most pleasing, a flock of 25 Carnaby's black-cockatoos.

Apart from the lifers, there were good numbers and variety of other birds with 200+ purple swamphens, pink-eared ducks, swamp harriers, musk ducks, singing honeyeaters, silvereyes, grey teal, Australian shoveler and a stunning spotted pardalote.

Meanwhile at Lake Monger there was an impressive flock of at least 300 blue-billed ducks with 50 musk ducks, 30 pink-eared ducks, 200+ hoary-headed grebes and 50 Australian grebes. Also here I was delighted to come across two spotless crakes showing well on the edge of the reeds.

Spotless crake