Today was the annual A Day in the Bay, a competitive Big Day entirely within Hobsons Bay. It is the most fun birding event in Melbourne and after coming second by a single species last year, Jonathan T went into it determined.

There are four races available: the most species seen and the most species photographed in both three-hour and 12-hour windows. Jono and I teamed up in the three-hour seen race, while I went solo in the photographed race. Aiming for quantity over quality means that I can illustrate this report with some of the worst photographs I’ve ever taken, all completely unedited and deleted from eBird as soon as the competition was over. Hooray!

(The lead image here is very nice and, therefore, not mine – it’s by Steffi Pereira on Unsplash, and was indeed taken in Hobsons Bay!)

Preparation

We didn’t have time for a test run this year, so instead I tried to take a similar approach to my August trip to the Northern Territory: I spent way too much time pulling down Hobsons Bay stats for October across 15 key sites and, from that, tried to determine our best route.

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The list of species was the full list of birds seen in Hobsons Bay – all 267 of them, including escapees, vagrants, and seasonal visitors with little to no chance of being present. Obviously there’s no point in planning around things that won’t happen, so I filtered down this species list in a couple of ways.

The first was whether, as of the day before the Big Day, the species had been recorded anywhere in Hobsons Bay during the current month. That is the ‘Oct 25’ column in the screenshot above.

The next was trying to get a sense of our chances of seeing a bird during the very short window we had. It’s great that a common bronzewing was seen at Cheetham Wetlands on 21 October (congrats Josh G), but that’s a huge site, it was the first ever record there, and it’s really not worth the time it would take. To achieve that, I grabbed the percentage of checklists at that location that include an observation of each species, from all the Octobers in eBird’s history. The ‘Best Location’ column is the place where the most checklists included that particular bird.

From all that I output a small dashboard, which gave us an indication of the actual potential. On the screenshot below, the species list is sorted by the probability that we would see the bird at its best site – 96 per cent of checklists at Newport Lakes include red wattlebirds and New Holland honeyeaters, making them near certainties. The location columns to the right, meanwhile, show the number of species that we have the best chance of seeing at that spot.

Using the ‘Seen’ column on the first screenshot, I kept this updated through the day: once we saw our red wattlebird, it dropped out of both the Species and Location lists, so we always had a sense of what we should be prioritising as we went around.

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So how did we do?

Newport Lakes

The tides were not in our favour this year, with high tide at 6.35 and low at 12.33. Given we only had a contiguous three-hour block, we couldn’t get both the dawn chorus and low tide. Rather than picking one or the other, we split the difference, starting a bit late at 8.36 and trying for some bush birds at Newport Lakes, and then planning to finish on the coast when the tide had at least partly receded. The morning started sunny, though only 12 degrees, with a gentle northerly wind blowing.

At Newport Lakes we got 23 species, mostly on or around the water: Pacific black duck, chestnut teal, spotted dove, Eurasian coot, Australasian grebe, Australasian darter, little pied cormorant, great cormorant, welcome swallow. Australian reed warbler and little grassbird were calling constantly.

In the trees we had rainbow lorikeet, noisy miner, red wattlebird, white-plumed honeyeater, New Holland honeyeater, spotted pardalote, pied currawong, willie wagtail, silvereye and common blackbird.

We got both superb fairywren and white-browed scrubwren in the same patch as we descended toward the ampitheatre.

A couple of things stood out here: we completely missed Australasian grebe in 2024, so it was nice to get it early and then not have to worry from there. It was lucky we did, too, because this was the only one that we saw all day. This was also true for Australasian darter, spotted pardalote, pied currawong and common blackbird.

Nevertheless this was a bit of a disappointing start! We were really hoping to tick brown thornbill, rufous whistler, grey fantail, shining flycatcher and sacred kingfisher here. The first three of those should have been easy, but we couldn’t find them. The flycatcher had been present in the days leading up but was not on Saturday. The sacred kingfisher we actually heard calling as we were getting ready to start, so we knew it was there, but as soon as we pressed the button to begin the day, it went quiet and we never encountered another one. There’s something known informally as the ‘tawny frogmouth tree’ here too, but I’ve never known where that is, so we missed that one.

We only spent 16 minutes here before moving on with our 23 ticks.

Jawbone Reserve

From Newport Lakes we zipped down to Jawbone, on the way adding a common myna (24) on a powerline on Maddox Road, and a long-billed corella (25) feeding on the median strip on Kororoit Creek Road.

Jawbone was great. We had 39 species overall, adding black swan, grey teal, blue-billed duck, crested pigeon, dusky moorhen, Australasian swamphen, pied stilt, masked lapwing, a large flock of red-necked stint, silver gull, hoary-headed grebe, pied cormorant, Australian white ibis, royal spoonbill, little wattlebird, yellow-rumped thornbill, Australian magpie, magpie-lark, little raven, golden-headed cisticola, common starling and house sparrow.

Out on the rocks on the bay we found a small black blob with a red bit (a sooty oystercatcher, 48), crested tern (49) and Australian pelicans (50), as well as some shorebirds that were unidentifiable at that distance. A single female musk duck (51) floating amongst the blue-billed ducks we might have overlooked if we hadn’t been informed by Tom P that there was definitely one present somewhere. It was a similar story with a single hardhead (52) with its bill tucked away amongst the chestnut teals, its white belly giving it away. We had no luck with pink-eared duck, freckled duck, yellow-billed spoonbill, Pacific gull or, surprisingly, great crested grebe, which are usually here in good numbers.

To the east of Jawbone there’s a boardwalk out through glasswort, coastal heath and saltbush where you’ve got a decent chance of buff-banded rail, black-tailed nativehen, crakes, and honeyeaters like singing honeyeater and white-fronted chat. It’s also the southernmost point of the reserve with a decent view for birds out over the water like Australasian gannet, Pacific gull or white-bellied sea-eagle. It was tempting to visit this section but it would have taken considerably more time that we simply didn’t have, and we elected to move on instead.

After 38 minutes we left Jawbone with 52 species for the day.

Kororoit Creek Mouth

The Kororoit Creek Mouth was an impulsive stop as we drove past. Here we added common greenshank (53), little black cormorant (54) and white-faced heron (55), all of which we saw plenty more of later in the day.

Earlier Jaime H had a Pacific gull, Caspian tern and European greenfinch here, while a later group got a white-bellied sea-eagle, none of which we found. It was worth stopping though, if only because it delayed us just long enough that as we were driving out four minutes later we saw a Nankeen kestrel (56) hovering over Maddox Road, which we didn’t pick up elsewhere.

We added a rock dove (57) further up Kororoit Creek Road, toward the Altona refineries.

Cherry Lake

We skipped Cherry Lake last year due to a lack of time. This year we stopped as my preparation suggested it should have been good for us, with semi-reliable freckled duck, Australasian shoveler, the chance for galahs on the sporting fields and both musk and purple-crowned lorikeets in the eucalypts along Sugar Gum Drive, and a few small ponds where I’ve seen black-tailed nativehen and have seen reports of crakes. We also figured we’d have another shot at a sacred kingfisher here, as Jono has seen them nesting in the boxes over on the western side.

This was another letdown though! We got none of those birds – bad luck and our lack of on the ground preparation, as we would have known that the gums along the road in weren’t flowering if we’d been able to visit ahead of time. We did manage to find a great crested grebe (58) after dipping at Jawbone, two whiskered tern (59) and a few red-browed finch (60, our only sighting for the day). We had an almost certain crake/rail call from a reed bed but couldn’t identify it.

I heard later that another group found a shoveler hiding among the reeds, but I didn’t hear that anybody found a freckled. Both a Baillon’s crake and Lewin’s rail were also reported later in the day – in hindsight, I suspect we had a Lewin’s, though neither of us could confidently say so at the time.

Cherry was a 16 minute stop, and we left with 60 species and having spent just over half of our three hour window. I’d say that by this point we’d moved out of the optimism phase and into a bit more concern about how things were tracking – I distinctly remember saying ‘not even a galah?’ as we drove out.

Truganina Swamp

Driving along Bell Avenue into Truganina Swamp we had fairy martins hawking on the road in front of the car (61). Here we saw event organiser, and the king of Hobsons Bay, Barry P, and the rest of his group, though didn’t have time to stop and chat.

Our hopes for a shoveler were again dashed, though there were more hardhead and great crested grebe here. A great egret (62) was fishing on the main pond, and Jono identified chatty Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoo (63) and Australasian pipit (64) by their calls. Over on the far side, I think near the Laverton Creek, I was able to spot a swamp harrier. Nothing quite as exciting as last year’s brolgas (which we didn’t see anyway), but another four ticks – five with the martin from the drive in.

We left after only 10 minutes. Another group that arrived at the exact same time and stayed six minutes longer managed to pick up sulphur-crested cockatoo, black-shouldered kite and singing bushlark – oh the missed opportunities!

Apex Park

I think that by this point we were both feeling pretty worried about the state of our list, having dipped on quite a few. It didn’t help that I got a phonecall from Ryan C as we arrived. He and his teammate in the three-hour competition Jeremy started with the dawn and had finished by that point, and hearing their total for the morning left me feeling a bit despondent!

Jono and I had two options: head out to AB Shaw Reserve a little further up the Laverton Creek and try to grind out some more of those bush birds that we’d missed (grey fantail, brown thornbill, parrots, and perhaps some of the unusuals that have been there this month – a red-backed kingfisher, pallid cuckoo, olive whistler, Latham’s snipe), or head to the creek mouth early and hope that the tide was far enough out that we’d find some shorebirds.

We picked the latter, and it was a very good choice. We drove down to Apex Park, finding red-necked avocet (66), marsh sandpiper (67), red knot (68, a lifer for me), little egret (69) and Eurasian skylark (70). Jono spotted and called out an Australian pied oystercatcher (71) as it flew in and landed on a sandbar, our only one of the day; and a tiny red-capped plover (72) on the other side of an inlet turned to face us, lifted its wing and was a little glowing white ball at the exact moment that I was gazing in that direction. Absent that movement there’s no chance that I would have noticed it.

We had another shorebird zip past but neither of us could identify it before it got out of view. We spent 19 minutes here and left at 72 species. We didn’t know this at the time, but AB Shaw Reserve ended up being a bit of a bust for most people who visited, so we got lucky with our choice to skip it.

Truganina Park and Laverton Creek Mouth

Our final stop was Truganina Park and Laverton Creek Mouth. The temperature reached around 17 degrees, but the clouds had also rolled in with a light wind was coming from the east.

Getting out of the car we had both fan-tailed cuckoo (73) and grey fantail (74) calling. We almost ran through the park itself, trying to hustle up to the mouth and (hopefully) some more shorebirds. We ran into Barry P and his group again, who helpfully directed us toward a distant whistling kite (75). Jono was able to get onto this one much quicker than me and I thought I missed my chance when it went behind some gums, but luckily it popped back out just long enough for me to see it.

Along the walk toward the shore we heard a striated fieldwren (76), which is a fairly reliable species in the adjacent grassland, and singing honeyeater (77). At the creek mouth we only added curlew sandpiper (78). Somehow we didn’t spot any sharp-tailed sandpiper, which I heard from others were present and seem like they should be a given in this location. A small flock of shorebirds settled on the wrong side of a sandbar for us to see them – I suspect these might have been sharpies, but we couldn’t get an identification.

I am going to give myself particular credit for two of our other observations here though. We were among the few teams to find black-faced cuckooshrike (79) and eastern rosella (80), both of which were the result of maybe the most obscene act of locking on to a flicker of distant movement that I’ve ever done. I’ve included photos of both to show just how distant these birds were – keep in mind that the uncropped pictures here are already at full zoom on my 600mm telephoto!

Our final bird of the day was also the most statistically unlikely bird of the day: a striated pardalote (81) calling on the other side of the Laverton Creek. We were the only group to get this bird last year, and it was here at Trug Park; and I think we have repeated that feat in 2025. It was calling enough that I heard it, alerted Jono, a minute went past and then it called a few more times and were able to note it down. Sorry Barry for not being able to share this one after you so generously gave us the kite!

We turned and jogged back toward the park, where Jono thought he heard blue-winged parrot, but he wasn’t confident and I didn’t hear it. With that, it ticked over to 11.36 and we finished up.

Our last sighting wasn’t a bird, but other birders – the team of Josh G, Aidan P, Bao S Y, Natalie T and Archer C on the other side of the creek, competing in the 12-hour race. They recorded 104 species and came second in their competition – congrats!

End of day

Almost immediately after we stopped our checklist, we heard the unmistakable call of a brown quail, which then repeated constantly on our walk back to our cars. We also had a brown thornbill land in front of us, and heard a singing weebill – all things that we might have been able to include on our lists if we hadn’t run through Trug Park on arrival.

Ending on 81 was fantastic though, and two better than last year. It was enough to get us the win – Ryan and Jeremy finished on 79 in their first time competing, while the three-hour competition champions for the past four years Anthony P and Liz A (team name Crake Expectations) had an unlucky day and only managed 74. I’ve no doubt both groups will be strong competition again next year.

I only photographed 31 birds in the end. It’s tough in the three hour – you only get one shot with a lot of things, and you’re moving so quickly that there’s no time to pause and hope the reed warbler you can clearly hear pops its head out. We didn’t get results on the photography competition but I think I might have been the only one participating in that window, so I’ll happily take a win by default if that was the case.

Comparing our results to last year, we did find hardhead, fairy martin and swamp harrier, all of which I identified then as particularly egregious dips, as well as musk duck, Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoo, fan-tailed cuckoo, red-capped plover, red knot, Australasian grebe, crested tern, whistling kite, Nankeen kestrel, Eurasian skylark and Australian pipit.

We didn’t find last year’s sharp-tailed sandpiper, banded stilt, bar-tailed godwit, galah, sulphur-crested cockatoo, rufous whistler, European greenfinch, European goldfinch, Australasian shoveler, Pacific gull, Australian spotted crake, sacred kingfisher, golden whistler or brown thornbill.

Like 2024, we couldn’t find black-shouldered kite, brown falcon, pink-eared duck, buff-banded rail, black-fronted dotterel and freckled duck.

My dashboard suggests that our biggest miss was red-rumped parrot, though to be honest that brown quail feels the worst. Three of the top five being AB Shaw birds makes sense, given we didn’t go there. I think that the location results also reveal that both Newport Lakes and Cherry Lake underperformed for us, while that coastal area from Apex Park to the Laverton Creek Mouth and adjacent Truganina Park overperformed.

I do think that the preparation helped, but it’s only ever going to be a guide. I think it helped us make the decision to go to the coast rather than try AB Shaw, for example. Some things the data couldn’t have told us: I knew that purple-crowned lorikeets hadn’t been recorded in the LGA yet in October, but the why – that the eucalypts on Sugar Gum Drive aren’t currently flowering – wasn’t clear. If we’d done a trial run and found that out then we might not have visited Cherry Lake.

So much of birding is also right place, right time, and not reducible to numbers in a fairly basic spreadsheet. We couldn’t have anticipated that Newport Lakes would give us so little when it’s usually such a good spot, but that’s how it goes sometimes, and that’s the fun of it. I have the sense that pulling all that data together was most useful for guiding my intuition on the day, rather than as strict rules for us to follow.

Ryan has already declared that next year he’s getting 90 in three hours – this is going to be a tough crown to defend!

Route Mapâ €