black swan

Birds along Western Beach

September 20, 2015 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

This trip took place on 12th September

Twas a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’ve started blogging about hiking adventures, so thought I should actually walk the section off the waterfront from Rippleside Park to Eastern Beach. Glenn had gone there to do some photography the week before and had seen a lot of swans. I thought it was worth checking out.

I had just gotten off the bus and was looking through the lens when my mum called.

She was letting me know she was in the area. “Oh, I’m at the beach. Hey, want to drop Sethy off? We can hang out for a few hours and walk to Eastern Beach.”

He liked the idea. 15 minutes later, I was there. I didn’t mind, it was a really lovely day.

There was a good deal of swans there, which was quite interesting. I rarely see them at Eastern Beach.

There were a couple of terns hanging out and fighting but the Nikon wasn’t really good enough to capture them. I’m keen to hopefully capture more photos of them. I’m quite fond of photographing terns, I don’t get close views of them nearly enough.

I also saw this incredibly beautiful immature pacific gull. I initially called it juvenile, but apparently that only applies for their first full plumage.

Ebird explains it better here.

A friend said this bird was in its second winter/second summer. It hung around for a while, thankfully. I’m in love with pacific and kelp gulls, especially the ones in the second and third years.

Cormorant

Sethy was doing his thing, looking for sea animals when I saw this cormorant in the distance. It had an eel in its mouth! I quickly snapped several photos while it was struggling to eat it.

It had literally eaten off more then it could chew. It was struggling and was continually diving under the water. I really wish I had the better camera at this point, the photos don’t do it justice.

I’ll probably return to the area now that things are getting busy at Eastern beach just to see what the birds are like. I’m hoping it will allow for similar scenes. I’m also planning to walk along other areas of the shoreline.

Swan Bay: Viewing from a distance

August 7, 2015 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

I used to love hiking. I had to drop the hobby when my agoraphobia worsened. I couldn’t leave the house and lost my fitness. I also lost all my blog posts from around that era.

Sometime, before 2009, I walked Bellarine Rail Trail. I did it over two separate visits and both 16km walks were enough to encourage me to buy expensive hiking shoes! The majority of the walk was through farmland and was beautiful, with the occasional opportunity to photograph a black shouldered kite. I was enamoured though when I got to the Swan Bay portion of the walk.

I don’t know if it is possible to get any closer, especially as I’ve since learned that birds love this area.

The photographs are beautiful but are of rather generic birds. I didn’t have the zoom lens at this time and my feet were blistered. I’m so keen to return here – especially over summer – which I know will annoy the heck out of me considering it is an hour on the bus. Also keen to explore swan bay. No idea how I’ll explore here as well as focus on Serendip + my other chosen locations.

It truly is an amazing wetland.

Lake Lorne with the little dude – again!

May 22, 2015 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

This trip took place on May 6th

Lake Lorne 🙂 It’s quickly becoming one of my favourite accessible birding locations. It can take a short while to get out via public transport – especially when compared to my local haunts – but it has a lot of diversity.

Sethy and I had gone to Lake Lorne in February. He enjoyed it, but was a bit disappointed. I had promised him freckled and blue billed ducks. We had gotten a bad view of a blue billed and the freckled were in small numbers.

Earlier this month, Carolyn invited me to both Ocean Grove and Lake Lorne. We had a fantastic twitch. I was so impressed with the birds I had seen there that I decided I should take Sethy up there ASAP. I don’t know the area intuitively yet, nor am I knowledgeable about bird movements on the peninsula. I wanted to get there quickly to hopefully see the same amount of birds. Was so glad I did!

Yes, swans are boring. I don’t care though, I always love seeing a family of swans.

Black fronted dotterel. Really need to find us a red kneed for Sethys list!

An unknown plant type that looked interesting. I’m going to start printing out some of these photos to take to the field nats, to help us figure out what we’ve seen.

Whistling Kite

I was hoping the whistling kites would show up in similar numbers to last time. The ducks here were fantastic but we were too busy looking at the kites.

We were able to observe their behaviour most of the time we were there and I got some really clear photos that will be able to help when teaching the little dude about ID’ing.

Spoonbill

I was able to get some beautiful photos of the spoonbills feeding. Sethy was getting a little bird bored and wouldn’t let me spend too long watching them, which was a shame.

Ducks

Blue billed, male and female.

You can see the decent number of pink eared ducks here, which I always love. Someone one ebird recently reported 150!

Small group of freckled ducks.

Shovelers.

This account is a bit rushed because there really isn’t that much to say. I’m not knowledgeable enough about this area to provide any real commentary.

Both visits this month have been great for photography. I don’t know if that is a seasonal thing. I’m thinking of returning soon by myself to see what photos I can get.

Sethy loved it, because the birds were accessible. I’m running out of places to take him to! Fortunately, people at the field nats are helping out with ideas and even things to pass onto him.

I’m feeling a bit unsure about what birding adventures I’ll go on next, especially with the impending move. Hopefully it wont impact me too much and I’ll get back into the birding/hiking scene.

Seth + Truganina: Part 2

February 23, 2015 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Last Wednesday, I decided to take Seth birding. I didn’t particularly want to take him anywhere but he had been having a rough couple of days, and we hadn’t adventured in over a week. I decided to go to Truganina because I really wanted him to see the banded stilt, and I couldn’t be bother thinking of anywhere else to go.

That’s the type of adventure you get if you wake me up early by playing bird calls on your ipad. I need more prep type for adventuring.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until we got to Laverton that many trains from Werribee are express on weekdays and we’d need to take THREE trains to get to the swamp.

Oops. He did okay considering the 6 trains we caught – and the drunk guy at one of the stations!

What did we see?

We hadn’t even gotten to the swamp when we saw this Australian Hobby. I wasn’t 100% sure of the ID, but the behaviour was similar to the one I had seen at WTP earlier in the week. I couldn’t say for sure so promised Seth we would look it up when we got home.

I had settled ID because of the colour and size of the bird. The guide said I should also check Peregrine falcon as the birds can often be confused. I just didn’t think that it was one. The wings weren’t stiff enough, it was flying pretty low to the ground. People in the bird ID group tentatively agreed with me… which is good enough for Seths list 😉

We did see a number of black winged stilts in the area but no bandeds. A friend lives nearby and said that there were a couple of them there that night. I’d checked beforehand about stilt numbers and the bandeds had been there for a couple of weeks. I think they were just hiding very well. I saw some that may have potentially been juvenile, but double checked proved otherwise.

It’s amusing for me, but less so for Sethy. Fortunately, we scored one lifer for the day.

A welcome swallow. I initially thought it was something else but figured that it was a juvenile. The markings are too bright, although they extend further then they normally do. The chest is too clear. The fail is short, yes, but that is common for a juv. 🙂 It can be really tricky trying to hold all of this in my head!

A disheveled looking willy wagtail.

Swans

Another main reason we went there was to see the wild swans. Alas, there were only 3 there this day. We got nice views of a pair flying off as a separate pair landed.

We also saw a swan with a neck tag.

It was a bit of a disappointing twitch, but it was all I could come up with in a short timeframe. Next time I might go to Newport Lakes park. I’m running out of ideas, especially for places that also interest me. I’m sick of Balyang.

Hopefully I’ll do some more birding of my own this week, plus there is the night parrot talk this weekend. Super excited.

First submission to MySwan – will definitely do it again!

January 21, 2015 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of swans with number tags on their neck. I assume these things happen when you leave the house more frequently 😉

Seriously, I’ve been visiting the western suburbs of Melbourne a bit more. I saw a swan with a name tag on it at Truganina and decided to go through my records so I could submit the data.

I’m always uncertain when contributing to citizen science projects, but this was actually fun. When I sent in the details, I was taken to a page which showed more information about the specific swan. I got to see the other places it had been sighted, how old it was and whether it was with another bird.

It’s almost not worth writing about. However, it made me feel more connected with the swans and the project. If you want people to care about your cause, or your study, you need to give them a reason to care. I want to help more with citizen science but I am time poor and a newbie. This process is something that people should try to emulate.

Learn more at MySwan.Org.au