I’ve already patch birded Lyneham Wetland, my local spot, pretty extensively. In the 94 days since I moved to Canberra I’ve completed 84 checklists, recordng 59 species and photographing 30 of those. It’s already my third-most birded location, after my Abbotsford apartment and Dights Falls.

Despite birding Dights extensively, I never really got into the habit of standardised surveys there. I’ve done them previously in the adjacent Abbotsford Riverbankers-managed site along the Yarra and they’re a regular feature of the Friends of the Helmeted Honeyeater surveys, so I’m familiar, but had never implemented one without that organisational expectation.

It’s a good practice though, it’s something more intentional I can contribute from my local area, and it lends itself to a regular trip report schedule, so I’ve set a calendar reminder to get out and do a 20 minute / 2ha survey on the first day of each month.

A 2ha area at Lyneham Wetland encompasses the main pond and approximately five metres back from the edge. Helpfully the wetland is ringed by a path at about this setback, which makes assessing which birds are countable and which are not a bit easier.

There’s a fairly large deviation from this rule on the eastern edge, starting at a small bridge over the drainage channel and running north along a fenceline until it reaches a second bridge and a second channel. This section has the only significant stand of eucalypts and I deliberately drew the survey area to include these. The site is otherwise only lightly vegetated with rushes and reeds.

The whole site is visible from a bridge over the northern section of the pond, but I elected to walk part way around it instead. I only used birds that I observed within the site, or heard calling from a place that I was confident was within it. Birds in flight that were clearly using the area – either as a perch to leave from or arrive to, or hawking over it – were recorded, but birds transitting through were not.

Results

I entered from De Burgh Street, crossed down toward Wattle Street, then doubled back, crossed the bridge over the pond and walked along the path adjacent to Goodwin Street.

Entering I immediately had a large number of Australian wood ducks, including a family that has been resident over the past couple of weeks. I think that these ducklings hatched in a hollow slightly further up Sullivans Creek – I saw a male standing guard in the area a few times, though I missed the actual event of them leaving the nest. The first record of them there was 20 August when there were nine ducklings. They were down to eight a week later on 27 August, and they’re still at eight today – sad to lose one, but impressive to have otherwise kept the brood together for almost a fortnight during their most vulnerable period.

At the mouth of the drain there was an Australasian grebe and the first of many hardhead. A small flock of rock doves flushed out of the drain itself, and two dusky moorhen whined away. A red wattlebird exit, pursued by a noisy miner.

Heading south to a small observation platform I found two magpie-lark feeding in the grass, more wood duck and two Pacific black duck on a small wall that runs along the western edge of the pond. A flock of rainbow lorikeets left their perches in the eucs along the eastern edge and noisily flew away. A silver gull was doing laps – eyeing those ducklings I expect, I’ve seen it get chased off by Dad duck a few times.

A single Australasian swamphen was picking through the reeds here too – their numbers have been quite unpredictable. For a bird that I think of as quite sedentary they can go from zero up to seven individuals day-to-day. I’ve no idea where they go.

I turned back to the north and crossed the bridge toward the gums. With the lorikeets gone I could more easily hear the other noisy birds here: miner and friarbird specifically, that is. Two Australian ravens sat high in a tree, attracting the ire of the former territorial little honeyeater. A magpie picked through the leaf litter.

As I crossed the bridge a spotted dove landed on the handrail, saw me, then thought better of it and left again. On the northern edge of the pond I had more hardheads and a single Eurasian coot. Sulphur-crested cockatoo screeched from atop the pines that line this edge, and a willie wagtail was singing from somewhere on the small casuarina-forested island.

I followed the path down toward where it hits Goodwin Street, finding a second spotted dove, two superb fairywren jumping through the reeds and a little pied cormorant that had been swimming out in the open but which I had somehow missed until now. There were more hardheads and a second grebe.

The final bird of my 20 minutes were a pair of welcome swallows hawking over the lake. These I counted; the Australian white ibis that were circling way up above me I did not.