To me it feels like Melbourne is having a 1960s retro
winter. We have had days on end where it has rained and drizzled non stop. The
wind has blown in hard from the south-west and made a wet 16º C day feel like a
4º C day. And when all that finishes we get two or three sparklingly blue-sky
days with no wind and the temp is in the low teens.
Yes, I can hear the giggles, Melbourne is always wet and
windy, right? But remember, from 1990-something to 2010 using the words “winter
rain” and “Melbourne” in a sentence created an oxymoron. Cold and windy maybe
but certainly not wet, and we have a very expensive, not completed, never used,
redundant desalination plant to prove it.
This is all very nostalgic but where does one go birding now
that Melbourne is having wet, windy winter days again, or even days that are
likely to end up wet and windy? Well that is easy, you go where you can see 90
+/- species of birds in winter without needing to get out of the car, except to
open the occasional gate. Werribee, the birding Mecca beside the bay.
And last Sunday was a prime example. A cold wet morning,
followed by about 2 hours of sunshine, followed by high cloud and a bit of
misty rain, all mixed with a bighting, Antarctic-ice-shard laden, south-west
wind. The Oriental Pratincole was still there, and standing in the exact
position it had been in on the 29th of July. Talk about site
loyalty! But the Broad-billed Sandpiper has disappeared, could it be doing a
reverse migration?
And the first Red-necked Stint showing breeding plumage is
there. Forget Cuckoos and Martins being the harbingers of Spring – at Werribee
the true harbinger is the return of the first wader! I did not see any last
Tuesday (07/08) but yesterday (13/08) there were dark bodies with red necks in
amongst all the drab gray over-wintering stints. Bliss, what will be next? A
sharpy? A Woody? I will be down every week now to Welcome Back the Waders – who
needs to go all the way to Broome! (Well, a bit of an exaggeration. I would
love to go to Broome but … ). Of course it all becomes very stressful after a
while as one scans through thousands and thousands of waders looking for that
one little ball of feathers that will start a twitch. Yeh, I can hardly wait
for the stress to start.
To fill in time waiting for the waders, this is the time to
watch all the other birds as they practice the rituals of the breeding season.
The male Horsfield’s Bronze-Cuckoo was feeding juicy caterpillars to his
prospective mate.
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| Male offering caterpillar to female |
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| Female |
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| Male |
The Little Grassbirds have given up skulking and were
sitting on top of bushes singing. This one was also taking time out to feast on the
gnats that were stuck in a nearby spider’s web.
A week or so back, Welcome Swallows were feeding up on
wrigglers from the roadside pools. They were really interesting to watch too.
HANZAB says that the average bill length of a Welcome Swallow is about 10.5mm.
Based on this the birds were catching wrigglers from depths up to approx 20mm
by ducking their heads under water while doing a fluttering hover. And to make
it more interesting HANZAB does not mention swallows taking prey from below the
surface of the water.
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| After each "dive" they shook their heads to remove water |
And a couple of times I saw and photographed the swallows
change from a horizontal hover to a near vertical hover, just touching the tips
of their tails in the water. Were they just washing their tail tips or could they
have been trying to lure the wrigglers closer to the surface? It happened so
often it was obviously not accidental, it was a planned action during the
feeding session.
The male Superb Fairy-wren is shaking off his dull,
gabardine-grey winter coat and fresh blue colours are starting to come through.
But in the wind some birds definitely struggle with bad hair
problems.
This time of year is also when Orange-bellied Parrots may be
found feeding along the tracks of the plant or perching amongst the saltbush.
It is also when a birder’s heart can be set a-racing. I came around a corner
and there was a neophema on the track
in front of me. What was it? OBP or Blue-winged? Well, the colour said
Blue-winged but one can’t be too careful. Blue-wings can have very orange
bellies and OBPs can be pretty drab. The answer these days, sadly, is not to
look first at the plumage but to look at the legs. 99.9% of the OBPs have been
banded. If it isn’t banded then it isn’t an OBP – most of the time anyway.
Of course there are down sides with the rainy weather, for
some people anyway. The tracks around Werribee are made up of a sticky mix of
mud and what ever came down the pipes from Melbourne over the last 150 years,
yumm. Sadly I have no photos of the events but it seems quite a few people have
been seeing a wet, grassy track and thinking they can drive their tiny town-use
50 mm ground clearance car down it, just like one could when it didn’t rain in
Melbourne during winter.
I am told one guy did it and was found sitting on a gatepost
beside 29 mile Road, late one rainy Sunday afternoon, waiting for the RACV to
arrive. RACV man did arrive but when told the job was to pull out a car that
was sitting on its floor pan in the mud with all four wheels in soup, he just rolled
around on the ground laughing before informing the unlucky driver “no way”.
Luckily there was a friendly birder who eventually pulled him out by using, and
risking, a very large 4X4.
The moral of the story for anyone going to the WTP at the
moment is, stay on the main tracks ONLY and keep off all those interesting
little side tracks. They may look solid, but they aren’t, and you may risk
digging around in solids you would not normally consider touching, even if they
are 150 years old.
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| Hardhead. They are very shy and the whole flocks takes off as you drive by |
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| Where people used to think "crows" should be; behind bars. Little Raven |
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| They often look very grubby but in flight ... |
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| Snakebird, otherwise known as Australasian Darter |
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| European Goldfinch are VERY cautious and hard to get near |
All images copyright to Jenny Spry
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