2506 Ballarat and Bendigo
This past weekend I took a quick trip out to see some friends in Ballarat and to try to fill some of major photo gaps up in Bendigo.
Saturday 28 June
Lake Wendouree
My first stop was at Lake Wendouree in Ballarat, and specifically the Fairyland section on the north-western edge. This was my third trip to Fairyland, after visiting in 2023, and despite being the deepest into winter it was actually the warmest I’ve ever been here. The sun was (mostly) out, light clouds, it was lovely.
The small, still ponds here are great for photography: you can get right up to the water’s edge and they’re narrow enough that birds are never too far away. I got two of my favourite shots I’ve ever taken on my last trip here – great crested grebes courting and dusky moorhens fighting.
The area was full of waterbirds, as expected: black swans, Australasian swamphen, Eurasian coots, dusky moorhen, masked lapwing all feeding on the water, on the edge, or on the grasses surrounding the lake. Pacific black duck were plentiful among the reeds at the water’s edge, and the bare trees and snags were home to little pied, little black and great cormorants.
Great crested grebes were entirely absent this trip, but I did have both Australasian and hoary-headed.
Many of these were targets for me, and I’ve greatly improved over my previous best shots. Heading to the northern corner I found a couple of grey teals, another target, and though I got better shots I’m still not at all happy with what I managed. They were far less cooperative than other birds. Also along here were white-plumed honeyeater, red wattlebird and superb fairywren.
Turning around there were a couple of crested pigeons sitting together on the grass, and a large flock of common starlings feeding. Two female common bronzewing were a highlight: I’m a big pigeon fan, and the bronzewings around home are very nervous birds. I definitely got my best ever shots of these gals.
Rising up over the lake – and causing a panic among the coots on the water – a swamp harrier lifted off from a reed island and circled a few times. Even the Australian white ibis decided to move on.
On the southwestern edge of the lake (in a spot that eBird calls ‘Loretto Dell’) I had brown thornbill, a single white-winged chough, and lots more duskies in the grass. The most surprising thing here was four freckled ducks mixed in amongst the Pacific black ducks – not a species that I had any expectation of finding on this trip.
Freckled ducks are endangered in Victoria1 in part due to habitat destruction by drainage, flood mitigation work and land clearing.2 They’re highly nomadic and tend to follow freshwaster availability, particularly moving into southeastern Australia during winter or periods of drought. In Vic they show up reliably in some places – Western Treatment Plant, Cherry Lake over in Newport, Braeside Park Wetlands – but can also turn up seemingly at random wherever there is water, which makes their presence unpredictable a lot of the time. Add to that how large and distinctive they are and they’re always a highlight.
I’m still not totally happy with the photo I got, though it’s an improvement over my previous. The light was fairly dull by the time I found these birds, and being outside the breeding season the males didn’t have their lovely bright red bill base. Still some work to do then!
After a couple of hours I circled back up through the Botanic Gardens to meet my newly local friends Christine L. and Nick R. In all it was a very successful walk around the western edge.
Sunday 29 June
Lake Wendouree
I returned to Lake Wendouree for sunrise on Sunday. The species profile was much the same as the previous day, but the light was gorgeous and I got quite a few shots I’m very pleased with.
One target bird for me on this trip which wasn’t present on Saturday was musk duck. Two of them were hanging out close to shore when I first arrived. One left almost immediately, heading off deep into the lake before the light was high enough for me to get any shots. I hung back and tried to keep the other in the area until I could grab a picture. Mixed success wtih this I would say – better than nothing, but heavily backlit, turned slightly away from me and nothing particularly interesting in the composition.
As I moved north I found more Pacific black ducks, coots, swamphen and moorhen. An Australian pelican made a noisy landing on the water and immediately moved aggressively at a great egret that had been quietly hunting on the river’s edge.
On the walk through Fairyland I found grey teal again, more black swan, and a rakali hopping into and out of the water and onto a small log. A white-faced heron flushed repeatedly as it was disturbed by joggers.
This trip I also went up into the North Gardens Wetland, which I didn’t do the previous day. In here there was a yellow-billed spoonbill perched up in a tree, a little grassbird hopped up onto a reed to say hello, and a few Australasian grebe hanging out on the ponds hung around long enough for me to grab a picture. Otherwise there were the usual suspects – Pacific black duck, superb fairywren, magpie-lark.
I circled back down to Loretto Dell where the freckled ducks were absent, but I got a very out-of-season Australian reed warbler call, and another visit from common bronzewings, this time including a male with his lovely golden crown. Above them a pair of sulphur-crested cockatoos screeched constantly.
Crusoe Reservoir and No. 7 Park
On my way through Kangaroo Flat I stopped for a few hours at Crusoe Reservoir. I arrived just after 13.00, parked at the main entrance and headed down along the dam wall before making a clockwise loop through the woodland. A single female Australian wood duck was feeding on the dam wall and a willie wagtail ran along the path behind me. There were a few coots on the water but otherwise it was almost entirely empty.
I picked up restless flycatcher on the south-east corner and, shortly afterwards, found a huge mixed flock: eastern shrike-tit, scarlet robin, buff-rumped thornbill, yellow thornbill, brown thornbill and a white-throated treecreeper. Most of these were Greater Bendigo ticks for me. I didn’t see either one, but both a white-faced heron and Australasian darter called from somewhere over the water while I was in the forest.
I couldn’t find any Australian owlet-nightjar or yellow-footed antechinus on this trip (unlike at the start of the month). Crusoe is the only place I’ve ever seen painted buttonquail, on my first ever visit, but I’ve never successfully refound them. There has only been one eBird record of them in 2025 so I don’t feel too bad about missing them, but I do wish I could see them again!
On the western edge I walked up the Marne Track toward Crusoe Road, a path I’ve never taken before. The forest mostly gives way in here to more open scrub, and there were a few large flocks of white-winged chough in the area – a common sighting that had been notably absent so far. I also got another Bendigo tick in mistletoebird – two of them high in a tree.
It was a fairly quiet trip, with only 38 species seen.
Monday 30 June
Greater Bendigo National Park (Old Distillery Dam, Diamond Dove Dam)
I got out before the dawn and reached Old Distillery Dam at around 7.30. I’d been here once before, on New Years Day this year with Veeraj and Raghav S. I remember it as a great spot – a productive mix of eucalypts, wattle and mallee. Immediately as I arrived I had brush bronzewings – one of my main photo targets here – flush from within a stand of acacias and disappear across the lawn and into the eucalypts, as well as magpies, ravens and a willie wagtail all making themselves known. Early on I also added white-eared honeyeater, silvereye and buff-rumped thornbill, all moving together and feeding together in a mixed flock.
I spent most of my time trying to track down those bronzewings. Pursuing them didn’t work. Beautiful as they are, they’re well-patterned to camouflage in the leaf litter as they pick through for seeds. They weren’t calling (though a common bronzewing was) so it was hard to track where they might be. If I did get close to them, they were very quick to bail – and not up into the closest tree, but somewhere else entirely.
Only once did I manage to spot them before they saw me. I lay down in their path for 15 minutes and waited for them to make their way over, which they slowly did – but they didn’t get close enough for an unobstructed photograph before they spotted me and moved on.
The Old Distillery Dam is actually a few different bodies of water. Behind the westernmost one I found a track through open scrubland that I didn’t notice on my last visit. Here I found some very active yellow thornbill, and almost as soon as I thought to myself that it seemed like good habitat for shy heathwren, two hopped out onto the path directly in front of me. They were as surprised by me as I was by them and they shot back into the mallee and I didn’t hear from them again. A pair of chestnut-rumped thornbill was an okay consolation prize.
After about three hours I moved north to the Diamond Dove Dam. If there was once a diamond dove here it is long gone, but it is typically still a very productive spot. I say typically because clearly there’s not enough flowering at the moment to hold honeyeater attention. There were yellow-tufted and an eastern spinebill here (listen to Blurbs!), but that was it. I came hoping for white-fronted, tawny-crowned and/or purple-gaped honeyeaters, but couldn’t find any of them. After less than an hour I moved on, finding a group of white-browed babblers as I moved back to my car.
I detoured to Elmore in the north-east to pick up a lifer, which did redeem the day for me somewhat: hundreds of plumed whistling-ducks on a farm dam. No good photos were possible but they were easily visible and identifiable from the road.
My attempt for a second lifer at Bendigo Sewage Ponds was unsuccessful. Two white-backed swallows were reported here earlier this month, but I couldn’t find them. Five LGA ticks later – chestnut teal, straw-necked ibis, Australian pelican, brown goshawk, whistling kite – I headed back for the night.
Tuesday 1 July
Greater Bendigo National Park (Old Distillery Dam)
Quite a late start for me today as I had some other work to complete this morning. I reached Old Distillery Dam at around 13.00 after a fairly slow drive up Bendigo-Tennyson Rd unsuccessfully hunting for banded lapwing in the adjacent fields.
As well as being late, it was quite windy on this trip, making tough birding conditions even tougher.
Once again when I arrived I had two brush bronzewings flush from some unseen spot among the shrubs. Unlike yesterday I never saw them again. The most charitable way to describe this birding is as a crash out. I walked a bit over a km in 90 minutes, mostly in the area around the dam but with a little bit of Mallee Track, and found only 14 species. It was a very similar mix: yellow and buff-rumped thornbills feeding together, weebills calling, red wattlebirds, both local ravens causing noise overhead. The only new bird I got today was a wedge-tailed eagle which circled high to the south.
After 90 minutes I’d stomached all that I could and came back to the accommodation, where I had a full meltdown and texted Ian M that brush bronzewings were going to cause me to abandon photography entirely. An absolute tantrum caused by a pigeon. How embarrassing.
Wednesday 2 July
Crusoe Reservoir and No. 7 Park
Jonathan T came up from Melbourne today. We met at Crusoe just after sunrise with one very important target in mind: to get Jono his Australian owlet-nightjar tick.
We weren’t successful.
We entered down at No. 7 Park, blue-faced honeyeater whip-calling as we parked our cars. A glowing white shape on the opposite shore immediately caught our attention: a white-necked heron, an LGA tick for both of us. We looped around the water to grab a photo of it, along the way finding Australian raven, eastern spinebill, magpie-lark, a female rufous whistler, and a mixed flock of weebill, buff-rumped, striated and yellow thornbills, a female golden whistler, yellow-tufted honeyeater, and superb fairywren, all moving through the eucalypts. Two little corella flew overhead.
This is by far the closest I’ve ever been to a white-necked heron, and I think the first decent photo I’ve gotten. I’d always assumed their backs were a dark blue-grey, which they predominantly are; I’d never noticed noticed the dark purple-red shoulder and wings though. A very handsome bird! Unfortunately I flushed it before Jono could get a shot – walking down from the track to the water’s edge where I thought it was still another 50m away, it turned out to be about 5m away. It tolerated me for about ten seconds then flew across the dam.
We finished the loop, adding white-winged chough, masked lapwing, Australian magpie, musk lorikeet and a small group of hoary-headed grebes out on the water (which I initially mis-IDed as Australasians and Jono was too polite to correct me on).
What followed was a long, quiet walk through the woods down to the main section. My brilliant navigating did see us accidentally loop back to the start before we followed a drainage channel. We added white-eared honeyeater, long-billed corella and spotted pardalote on this walk, saw some more fairywrens, but the only excitement was a large mixed flock containing buff-rumped thornbills, yellow thornbills, a grey shrikethrush and both male and female scarlet robins. The mix was very similar and not too far from where I photographed buff-rumped thornbill a few days earlier.
When we reached the main path we added eastern yellow robin and eastern rosella. We checked both of the reliable Australian owlet-nightjar hollows, and a few we saw at random, that I know about but all were empty. Grey currawong and little raven called from somewhere toward the west.
Along the lakeside path there is a small copse of introduced pines which we visited. A sulphur-crested cockatoo screeched in here, a brown thornbill quietly foraged, we got a glimpse of some coots on the water and a white-browed scrubwren moving along with a small flock of superb fairywren.
In here we also found a female rose robin. She had been reported a few times recently and I was told to keep an eye out when I visited at the start of the month, but this was the first time I’ve ever seen a female rose. She had a way of holding her wings down low and rolling her shoulders in a way that seemed distinct among petroica robins.
I didn’t get any photos of her, but Jono got a nice one.
We looped back toward the cars from here, adding brown-headed honeyeater by call as we walked through, as well as galahs. The restless flycatcher was not around. We briefly walked out to look at the water from the southeastern edge, just to see what we could find, and were initially disappointed, but within a couple of minutes we added another five species: great cormorant, Pacific black duck, black kite, white-throated treecreeper and willie wagtail. On Hammill St we found grey fantail and noisy miner, then Australian wood duck, common starling, rock pigeon, crested pigeon and, lucky last, three common blackbird to get us to a nice even 50 for the morning.
After Crusoe we took a quick trip up to Bendigo Sewage Ponds, again hoping to find a white-backed swallow. No luck, but we did add pink-eared duck, Australasian shoveler, grey teal, chestnut teal, grey butcherbird, Australian pelican, straw-necked ibis, whistling kite and musk duck for the morning, and we got a good view of some blue-faced honeyeaters.
We checked dozens of swallows across the different fields and ponds but none were our target. I dropped Jono back to his car in a KFC carpark at around 12.30. While we were chatting at the very end of the day we had one final bird – a common myna – which left the carpark and flew into an introduced palm tree in somebody’s yard. This was bird number 100 for my trip – almost as anticlimactic a final species as is possible, but I was happy to bat a century.
I think I’d overall call this trip more of a failure than not. Some of the photos I’m quite happy with, especially from Lake Wendouree, but these are largely urban environment birds that are resident and reasonably comfortable around humans. Everything that I was trying for in Greater Bendigo NP I dipped on. It was clearly a bad time of year to visit – there were so few honeyeaters around, little flowering, and very low abundance across all sites. A lifer is great, but I can’t help feeling like this was a waste of time. My fault for visiting in winter – I’ll save the next trip for the warmer months.
- Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action 2025. Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988. Threatened list. March 2025. https://www.environment.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/741627/FFG_Threatened_List_March_2025.pdf ↩︎
- Carboneras C. and Kirwan G. M. 2020. Freckled duck (stictonetta naevosa). Version 1.0. In J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie and E. de Juana (eds.) Birds of the World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/freduc1/cur/ ↩︎