Glenelg

I’m on my way to Murray Bridge for work’s annual conference. That starts on Wednesday so I thought I’d take a few extra days and drive over via the Coorong. I may not have done this if I’d known how expensive petrol was about to become when I booked this, but hey.

I’ll cover the South Australia portion in a separate post.

Saturday 21 March

My first night was down in Portland, a place that I had never been. I left just before 7.00 on Saturday morning to visit some friends in Ballarat. My first recorded birds were a few house sparrows on Armstrong Street where I grabbed a coffee.

From Ballarat I went over to Dunkeld, spotting a whistling kite overhead on the way, where I grabbed another coffee and spent three minutes driving around the arboretum. It was already early afternoon and there wasn’t much around – a few red wattlebirds, Australian magpies, common blackbird, common starling and I could hear a spotted pardalote. Alas.

I stopped at Lake Hamilton, which was a bit better: black swan, Pacific black duck, grey teal, musk duck, dusky moorhen, loads of Eurasian coots and masked lapwings, Australasian swamphen, silver gull, little pied, little black and gret cormorants, cattle egret and pelicans were all on or around the lake. In a small section of bush near the adventure playground there were a few superb fairywren, white-browed scrubwren, willie wagtail and welcome swallow, as well as more magpies. The cattle egrets and musk ducks were the most exciting, but it was still a fairly standard list of urban water birds.

After this I went straight through to Portland, and to the gannet colony at Point Danger in particular. The headland is a mix of acacias, banksias and coastal heath and hosts Australia’s only mainland breeding colony of gannets. If that isn’t appealing enough (and it is already very appealing!), for more than a decade it has also been home to a Cape gannet, a vagrant from southern Africa. The colony has already dispersed for the year unfortunately – missed the end of it by less than a week – but I decided to stop in anyway.

It was well worth the trip: plenty of Australasian gannets hunting on the ocean or joining the black-faced cormorants over on Lawrence Rocks, a few crested terns, silver gulls, as well as singing honeyeaters, red wattlebirds, superb fairywrens and striated fieldwrens. There was also an eastern brown snake that was glowing beautifully as it sat on the road in the afternoon sun.

I got a lifer here: my first ever albatross. Four shy albatross were visible out over the water, circling around. I knew that they were big, of course, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how big they are. Once I’d seen one, it became very easy to pick them out among all the other white dots: they were noticebly larger as they circled low over the water. Fantastic.

I next went to the lighthouse at Cape Nelson, which was similarly a coastal health-dominated scrub along exposed clifftop. The lighthouse and cafe were closed, and there was seemingly nobody in the two accommodation options here – I was the only person around!

The birds were similar to at Point Danger: out on the water were more gannets, gulls, and shy albatross (I greedily checked every one of them for a black-browed or Indian yellow-nosed, but no luck). I also saw crimson rosella, New Holland honeyeater, crested pigeon, my first forest raven in a couple of years and heard a laughing kookaburra doing its thing.

It was quite late in the day – 18.00 – when I reached Cape Bridgewater. I came out here as a local told me that hooded plovers are breeding in the dunes here. She was correct: I found a single lonely bird sitting on nest, with little ravens stalking up the beach and seemingly waiting for the opportunity to get at the eggs. It was well fenced off and managed by volunteers, with a blackboard announcing that hatching was expected within a week – good luck little guy.

Also on the shore here were both Pacific and kelp gulls, Australian pied oystercatchers, and loads more silver gulls and crested terns.

On the drive back a flock of Australian shelduck flew over.

My final stop of the day was at Fawthrop Lagoon, a large, shallow lake back in town. The lagoon is fed by the Wattle Creek and slowly drains out into the harbour by a channel; in between is a wonderful expanse of reed beds. This was excellent: I recorded 28 species here, including new for the day grey and chestnut teals, hoary-headed grebe, royal spoonbill, both little and long-billed corella, musk lorikeet and a little grassbird calling away.

Sunday 22 March

I went back down to toward Point Danger on Sunday morning, arriving at Blacknose Point just before sunrise.

My hope was to track down and photograph some brush bronzewings – but oh how many times I’ve written that sentence. They’d been reported a couple of times in the general area in recent months but not with great regularity. I found a single individual, but not before it found me and zoomed away. Alas.

At least I found it and saw it though, which is more than I can say for my other three main targets here.

I really wanted a rufous bristlebird shot, and though I heard them in the scrub, I did not get a look. I’ve seen them in the past and found them pretty accommodating – a great carpark bird anywhere along the Great Ocean Road – but they weren’t willing to pop out and say hello.

The other two main targets – chestnut-rumped heathwren and beautiful firetail – would have been lifers but I didn’t get even a hint of either one.

Otherwise it was a fairly similar list of birds to Saturday: little raven, singing honeyeater, brown thornbill, grey fantail, with a few Australasian gannets out over the ocean. A very cute white-browed scrubwren popped up onto a log to say hello. A few magpies chortled at me somewhat menacingly. I spent about 45 minutes here but was on my way to South Australia by 8.00.

On my way, passing endless pine plantations, I saw a couple of emu, a wedge-tailed eagle overseeing some ravens picking at a roadkill fox, and so many swamp wallaby along the side of the road.

I paused at Nelson just a few minutes from the border, assuming (incorrectly) I could get a coffee here. That wasn’t to be, but it was a good little stop down at the jetty anyway. I had a chat to a couple going out paddleboarding on the Glenelg River in what must have been absolutely freezing water, and a father and son putting a boat in eyed me suspiciously in that welcoming country town way.

The birds here were good: the forest ravens were calling, there were pelicans and gulls overhead. I saw my first white-faced heron of the trip and watched it fish up a small crab. Chestnut teals were the dominant duck but there were also a couple of musks out in the reeds and both hoary-headed and great crested grebes way out on the water.

Big highlight here though was my first common sandpiper in Victoria. It was feeding away at the water’s edge and I am amazed that I didn’t flush it before seeing it; I was quite close when I finally noticed it. I was able to crouch down and get a couple of photographs before it decided to move on.

I ended this part of the trip with 68 species, including a couple of lifers.