The wetland is a small park that is part of the town’s stormwater management. A small boardwalk loops through the wetland, with a dense reed bed to the south and more open ponds draining into large, inaccessible fields out to the north.

I stopped in on my drive back from Narrandera this morning, my first visit. I arrived just before 8 and only spent 20 minutes there but it was well worth it. I parked on Crawley Street and accessed the site from there. There were house sparrows in an adjacent business lot and welcome swallows hawking along the road.

Entering the park I flushed a crested pigeon and heard blue-faced and white-plumed honeyeaters. In the reeds to the south of the board walk there were little grassbirds, Australian reed warblers and golden-headed cisticolas calling constantly. I got a decent look at all three of them at different points in the morning.

Pacific black duck continually flew around the site but I didn’t see them land. The only duck that was on the larger pond was a male Australasian shoveler. There were also dusky moorhen, Eurasian coots, an Australasian swamphen and a few Australasian grebes as well – the bravest little grebes I’ve ever seen, they swum right up to the viewing platform that I was standing on. I’ve never seen that from a grebe before.

Continuing to the second boardwalk, which loops around a smaller pond on the north, there were more swallows, a masked lapwing and multiple magpie-lark. In the flooded field to the north there was a white-faced heron, and a little pied cormorant flew in to sit briefly on a handrail before it noticed me and thought better of it.

Overhead there were rock doves, galahs, little corellas and rainbow lorikeets. Two grey teal joined the Pacific black ducks in circling around. Both a pied butcherbird and a pied currawong called from a line of eucs on the western edge.

As I doubled back to leave, I heard a spotless crake calling from the southern reeds. I’m bad with crake call at the best of times but spotless was in my head after hearing them at Fivebough yesterday. I stuck around, hoping to catch a glimpse of it, and I’m glad that I did because after about five minutes a second crake, an Australian spotted crake, called from somewhere much closer to me. I didn’t see either one in the end, but it was nice to know that they were there.