Braeside Park Wetlands

This morning Jonathan T and I met bright and early for a trip around Braeside Park Wetlands. It was my third time at the park and my second time at the wetlands portion specifically so there is plenty left for me to see in this terrific place. We were there hunting ducks (in the nice way): over the past few weeks there have been lots of reports of large numbers of freckled ducks, pink-eared ducks and Australasian shovelers across the ponds, three birds that are big photo targets for me.

It was cold and foggy when we arrived. Immediately we had a Australian magpies, noisy miners and, and, walking along Sets Trak, a single crested pigeon scurrying off the path and out of our way.

We went up the main road and straight to the viewing platform, where the fog was slowly lifting off the water in the early morning light. It was quite a lovely scene! Also lovely were the chestnut teals, a single grey teal mixed in with the females, providing a nice example of their light throats, black swans, Eurasian coots and Pacific black ducks. Off the side of the platform a very vocal little golden-headed cisticola greeted the dawn.

Here we found the first of the targets for the morning. Two pairs of pink-eared ducks were vortex feeding; swimming around in a tight circle and creating a column of water between them which traps small invertebrates for them to catch. It’s a technique not employed by many other birds but is almost the sole foraging method for pink-eareds.

Lovely as it was, the fog created a significant haze and my photos here were all quite soft. A better photographer could have adapted to the environment and produced some lovely images, but I’m set in my ways – I wanted close-ups!

(Edit 11/05: After complaining about these photos, the photo of the duck spreading its wings was featured on eBird’s front page, so I probably need to get a grip.)

At our next stop furhter north we had magpie-lark, Australian pelicans, a little black cormorant – curiously our only cormorant of the day – more chestnut teals, Australasian swamphens, a great egret and a royal spoonbill. On the walk through we also added lots more parrots to our morning list: both rainbow and musk lorikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoo and somewhere, calling unseen, a yellow-tailed black-cockatoo. A spotted pardalote was also heard but not seen, as was a white-browed scrubwren somewhere in the brush.

We continued up the main path for quite a way without adding anything much of interest – little ravens, spotted doves, common myna, a common blackbird and plenty more lorikeets – so turned back and continued counterclockwise around the wetlands from the north.

This was definitely the right decision; we found our second target for the morning – a freckled duck! We had more than 30 of these in the end, but this was the first, and it was also the only one on water.

Unfortunately, being on the western side of the wetland and looking east, every bird here was heavily backlit so I’m quite unhappy with all these photos as well.

As we wandered along this section we found both black-fronted and red-kneed dotterel, silver gull, grey butcherbird, willie wagtail, lots of welcome swallows feeding along the mud and a flyover from a single lonely Australian white ibis. We also found quite a few other birders here – six, from memory, and stopped to have a chat to most of them. Two red-rumped parrots flew over and an eastern rosella called from a nearby tree, dropping briefly into site before zipping away.

All along this western section there were freckled ducks standing on the water’s edge in a line. After single individuals dotted around in other ponds, here we counted 33 in a line in the main section. They also had two maned ducks mixed in with them – trying to hide from us, but we found them.

On a trees we spotted two black-shouldered kites – one prominently perched on a dead tree, the other hidden amongst the leaves of a live one.

The water levels on the pond were lower than last time I was here – far too low for cormorants or darters to feed, we assumed, which would explain their almost complete absence. We figured it would be good for crakes or rails, but sadly we found nothing of the sort.

After looping out of the wetland – finding a pied currawong as we did – we were sitting at 47 species and decided to scope out the woodland section a bit more to see what else we could drum up. It was a good thing that we did: we added masked lapwing, striated pardalote, little wattlebird, brown thornbill, grey fantail and brown goshawk in a quick walk over near the eastern boundary near to the car. The goshawk was a terrific final bird for the day – it soared over us and scared hundreds of musk lorikeets out of the gums – but I also would have been happy to find a quick feral pigeon for 54. Oh well – there’s always next time!