These tiny coastal birds face multiple threats in their native beach-front nesting habitats, including dogs, horseback riding, beach goers, and erosion, so we thought that we would never see them before they went extinct. However, with some recent excellent intel, we bucked that trend and finally found them at Point Roadknight near Anglesea along the Great Ocean Road.
So imagine our shock, disbelief, and utter horror, when we arrived in the afternoon and were told that a massive flock of birds, including the Tufted Duck, had been flushed just 10mins prior, and the bird could not be relocated!
Every year during the long nights of winter, Eastern Barn Owls are known to frequent the paddocks around the Western Treatment Plant. The owls congregate to take advantage of the bounty of mice and other small prey that the freshly cut fields expose, and are very active in the first couple hours of darkness. One…
It was clear that this was a stunning bird – its angel-like flight pattern of spreading it wings, its bone white feathers, its bright yellow talons, and its mesmerising stare.
2017 was a busy year (aren’t they always?) so I didn’t get around to writing trip reports for every bird outing. That’s not to say that we didn’t do a respectable amount of birding though, because looking back at the photos, we had some fantastic experiences! Here is my promise to you, Constant Reader: shorter…
The Western Treatment Plant is perhaps the premier birding site in Victoria, Australia, with more than 280 species being recorded, and it’s definitely one of our favourites. We try to visit it at least four times per year (once per season), usually prompted by reports of relatively rare birds. (Here is a blog post about the ‘poo…
A friend over at The Research Whisperer blog once told me that a good blog post is written in a conversational tone. I have tried to take this advice on board, but more than a decade of working in the research space has had its effect on my writing style: it still has a matter-of-fact and impersonal…
The Western Treatment Plant never ceases to thrill birders with migrants, vagrants, and rarities. On 11 September 2015, the Victorian birding world was abuzz with the first ever report of an Eastern Osprey at ‘the Plant’, and since the birding Mecca was just a hop, skip and jump away, we were determined to try our…
While writing this post, it became apparent that we did quite a few little birding trips in the first half of 2015. None of these (in my opinion) were worthy of a stand-alone post, since many were just short walks, others were visits to spots already covered in previous posts, and some were rather uneventful. Nonetheless, here…
With more than 280 recorded species of birds, no Victorian birding trip is complete without a visit to the Western Treatment Plant (WTP). When we started birding in earnest, there wasn’t much basic information online about the WTP (like where the toilets are located!). Hopefully this blog post will assist newbies in making the most of…
Birding Lovers 