Werribee Water Treatment Plant, back for seconds (and thirds!)

Back in Melbourne for a week and the obvious thing to do was to get the key to allow me access to Werribee Western Treatment Plant again. I mean it is rated one of the best wetland sites in Australia so crazy not to go again, and it worked out pretty well actually, the first two weeks I was there I only saw one new species for my Aussie list, yet this week I managed to add several. Key to this success was finally working out where Crake Pond was, and this provided me with not only with about four Australian spotted crakes and three Baillon's crakes, but also a pectoral sandpiper and nearby an Australian hobby. In the final analysis, Werribee WTP provided me with 103 species during my stay in Melbourne.

Seeing southern emu-wrens

One of the highlights of my holiday from a birding point of view was finally seeing southern emu-wrens. I didn't get any photos of the birds for reasons I will explain, but it was such a great experience that it's worth recounting.

I'd heard that there were southern emu-wrens on Anglesea Heath at the start of the Great Ocean Road and decided it was worth a look, if for no other reason than it was somewhere new to visit. I headed for a small and little known botanical reserve called the Mary D White reserve which lies about 1km west of Anglesea and is accessed from the Guvvos beach car park. I had spent about an hour in the area and seen a few superb fairy-wrens and best of all a new species of honeyeater for me, white-eared, but was starting to lose hope with the emu-wrens. I'd looked for them before around Port Lincoln without a sniff of the birds and this looked like it would be a repeat no-show.

Then suddenly I heard the faintest of calls, a high pitched steet. Was it and insect, was it a bird? Surely an insect, it appeared to be in the vegetation almost under my feet! I waited patiently for several minutes, hearing the call again occasionally and eventually started catching glimpses of a very small bird moving through the undergrowth right alongside me. Eventually I realised that there were about five birds close by, and finally I got an excellent view of a stunning male with sandy brown plumage and bright pale blue throat and long tail. A stunning little bird. Not surprising that I'd found them so difficult in the past if I could initially not see them in vegetation that barely covered my shoes! And then they were gone, not to be seen or heard again.

Bellarine Peninsula

So back in Australia and I found myself some decent self catering accommodation in Werribee and then contacted Melbourne Water and managed to get hold of the required key for the rest of the week. However, not wanting to spend all of my remaining time at the water treatment plant, today I decided to visit the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong and about 110km south west of Melbourne CBD. It's a really impressive place full of great birds, impressive wetlands and glorious beaches.

However the first place I visited on the way to Ballarine was Jerringot Wetlands in the city of Geelong where I managed to see a few Latham's snipes which were new for me. This is a species which breeds in Japan and spends the northern hemisphere winter in Australia.

Return to Aus!

Great to be back in Aus after a brief visit to North Island, New Zealand, and one of the most obvious differences are the very visible Australian mammals which help make the country so special to me.

Muriwai Australasian Gannet Colony

I cut short my visit to Tiritiri by a day in order to make sure that I got to Muriwai before I left New Zealand. I've been to gannet colonies before at places like Bass Rock, St Kilda, Noss, Fair Isle, Herma Ness and Bempton Cliffs and I wanted to see how this compared. I was not disappointed.

It might not have the numbers of birds, just a couple of thousand pairs I believe, but still really impressive.

The Sadness of Tiritiri Matangi

Takahe

I spent five days in New Zealand and didn't see a single native passerine except those that I saw on Tiritiri Matangi, a fact which I find very depressing. It appears that the only way large parts of terrestrial native wildlife can survive in New Zealand is by uprooting it and moving it to a completely managed island and removing all alien pests. It was on Tiritiri, an apparent idyllic paradise that the first seeds of doubt were sown in my mind.

Hauraki Gulf Pelagic

New Zealand storm petrel

Another awesome pelagic trip today, this time into the Hauraki Gulf, North Island, New Zealand. Completely different to the pelagic I had with Josh on Sunday, but just as good. Whereas Sunday was about albatrosses and whales, today was about petrels, especially New Zealand storm petrel. This is a species which for 180 years was considered extinct until the people who run this pelagic rediscovered it and today I saw about 10.

Wrybill at Miranda

I had an enjoyable visit to Miranda today, if a little frustrating because I got my timings all wrong and arrived at low tide rather than high tide and then had a six hour wait for the action to begin. Eventually though it did begin and in amongst the thousands of bar-tailed godwits, knot and other waders, at least 47 wrybill.  This is an iconic New Zealand endemic, with a bizzare bill which bends to the right of the bird. Also today, white-fronted terns, New Zealand Dotterel and pied stilts, which included at least one pied x black stilt hybrid.

Wanderer at 6 o'clock!

Snowy albatross

"Wanderer at 6 o'clock!", the cry went up and sent shivers down my spine. This was the moment I had been dreaming of for years, the appearance of a great albatross during a southern ocean pelagic. We'd been at sea for six hours, we were 35 miles offshore from Port Fairy, Victoria, over the edge of the continental shelf and the sea bed was nearly a kilometer below us. We'd seen many albatrosses already, but they were all of the smaller type, in this region often referred to as molyhawks. Four species in fact, shy, black-browed, Indian yellow-nosed and Campbell albatross, all with wingspans of 2.5m or less.

The new arrival was considerably bigger, a wandering albatross with a wingspan of up to 3.5m, the longest of any living bird. This awesome and majestic bird glided past the boat without a single flap of the wings, dwarfing the nearby molyhawks and taking my breath away. Over the next hour or so the bird stayed with us and was joined by an immature bird, as well as two other species of great albatross.

Koalas on the Great Ocean Road

On our way to Port Fairy from Melbourne for a pelagic, we decided that it was too good an opportunity to pass up on the Great Ocean Road. Really beautiful scenary, if a little busy at the Twelve Apostles. My favourite stop was at Kennett River where we saw about 20 koalas, some with babies, a tawny frogmouth with a baby and several Australian king parrots.

Long Forest

White-plumed honeyeater

Long Forest is about 30 miles north west of Melbourne and is an area of gum tree and eucalyptus scrub known as mallee. I visited it today just to try to get a few new species on the list and to check out a new area. In the end I added three new species, white-plumed honeyeater, buff-rumped thornbill and best of all speckled warbler. It's an interesting area with lots of potential and well worth a look for any birder in the Melbourne area.