Western Treatment Plant

This past Sunday I visited the Western Treatment Plant with some friends-of-a-friend visiting from out of town. It was my second trip in three days – I went on Friday with Jonathan T – and I was prepared for a repeat trip to be a bit of a drag, but it was a great morning.

While waiting for them at the carpark I had an LGA tick when six musk lorikeets flew over, as well as galahs and an Australian hobby – a nice start to my day!

We started at the T-Section at around 8.00am. I’d forgotten that daylight savings ended the night before when I scheduled, so we were around 45 minutes after sunrise – we missed the good light, but there were plenty of birds around.

We paused quickly at Gate 1, stopping to see the golden-headed cisticola that were buzzing around. They were being very cooperative for photographs, which was great – both Ryan C. and Joe G., my companions for the day – were keen to get pics where they could. On Pond 7 we had plenty of the usual birds – Eurasian coot, hoary-headed grebe, pied stilt, black swan, both chestnut and grey teal, Australian pelican, pinked-eared duck – but also a few fun surprises. Hiding amongst a large flock of red-necked avocet was a single banded stilt, a first for me at the treatment plant. There were a couple of Australasian shovelers here too, and a red-capped plover running around on the near shoreline. We also had both sharp-tailed and curlew sandpiper mixed in. Both a black-shouldered kite and two whistling kites hunted over the Summer Lagoon to our right, and welcome swallow zipped around.

We moved up towards the crake pond, stopping briefly to see the Cape Barren geese that were feeding on the road. In the distance a single brolga flew out from the fields to the south of the section and settled somewhere closer to the coast, south of the lagoons. Two great cormorants were diving on Pond 1.

At the crake pond (Pond 3) we found both red-kneed and black-fronted dotterel, red-necked stints, more sharp-tailed sandpiper and swallows. Ryan spotted a single pectoral sandpiper in the mix, and very excitingly, we also found a wood sandpiper. I hadn’t realised that one had been sighted the previous day, and we took photos of it thinking it looked a little odd and were able to ID it only once we got home. That was a lifer for me, my only one of the day. An Australian spotted crake briefly appeared here too, but hid away when a nankeen kestrel hovered over the pond looking for a meal. A double-banded plover towered over the stints that it was feeding with.

Here we ran into Tim C., who I’ve met out in Yellingbo in the past. He was there with his two sons watching the shorebirds as well.

We found freckled ducks on Pond 5, which was fantastic – a lifer for Ryan and Joe, as well as for Tim and his sons, and an LGA tick for me. There were five in all, bills tucked away so it was only their huge size that made us look at them a second time.

Taking the loop out past Pond 5 we flushed multiple Eurasian skylark. Perched on a post in the middle of the southern fields here Ryan identified a striated fieldwren, clearly identifiable despite the distance by its strong white brow and propped tail. Among the many royal spoonbill on Pond 6, we found a single yellow-billed spoonbill, and a couple of Australian shelduck. An Australian pipit flushed from the grass alongside the road and – pipit style – ran along ahead of the car for some distance.

We had 55 species overall just at the T-Section, which is a new single-visit record for me. eBird tells me I’ve only seen 73 in this location, and 13 of them were new on this trip. It was a terrific start to the morning.

From here we crossed the road into the Western Lagoons. The big excitement here – which we unfortunately missed – was the first sighting of an Australasian bittern in some months. Tim’s kids accidentally flushed it while they were walking along a road, and got some terrific in-flight photographs in the process. We tried to relocate it but were unable to.

We did however find musk duck, swamp harrier, hardhead, Australasian grebe and pacific black ducks. Two common greenshank gave us pause for a moment – I really wanted one to be a marsh sandpiper, but no luck – and we happily stopped to watch every red-capped plover that we found.

The coast road here yielded a few new birds – superb fairywren, silvereye, a singing honeyeater, white-browed scrubwren – but neither of the neophema parrots that we’d been hoping for. Jono and I had blue-winged here a few days previously, but all was quiet on Sunday. On the bay Ryan got his first look at great crested grebe here as they floated around on the ocean, and we also added silver gull, little pied cormorant and Australian pied oystercatcher to our daily list.

We were four hours in by this point and we started to wind down. I managed to track down some zebra finch for the guys along a section of Beach Road. Both black and whistling kites were also hanging around, as well as our first grey fantail, European goldfinch and European greenfinch of the day. A little way further down the road we found more finch, as well as white-plumed honeyeater, willie wagtail and yellow-rumped thornbill. Two wedge-tailed eagle circled far above.

Down at the Point Wilson Boat Ramp we had a swamp harrier that I was convinced was a possible black falcon – it wasn’t – along with crested tern, a Pacific gull, and lots of pied cormorant. Heading into Gate 4 adjacent to Ponds 28-30 we caught sight of some small terns out on the bay – a few clearly little terns still in breeding plumage, while the others in eclipse plumage we had confirmed for us as fairy terns. I didn’t get the names of the two gentlemen who were set up there with a scope watching those terns, but as it happened they were working on a guide to differentiating between the two species when not in breeding. How convenient is that!

We continued up past Lake Borrie, adding blue-billed duck, with plenty more kites and ducks in the area as well. On the way out we added New Holland honeyeaters on Point Wilson Road, a great end to the day and another LGA tick for me.

The biggest dips for us in there on Sunday were probably red-browed finch, spotted dove, common myna, as well as the two that I keep failing to find: black falcon and banded lapwing. 88 species overall though, beating the 80 species that Jono and I saw on Friday, even with some differences between them.