sooty oystercatcher

It was the first week of the holidays. My parents did their semi regular trip to Apollo Bay, and I thought I’d try to knock out a couple of parts of the great ocean walk. I was lucky enough to do this on two of the days – you can read about those adventures here.

Shelly Beach to Marengo

The first part of the walk was from Shelly Beach to Marengo, accompanied by the little dude. There was a lot of rock scrambling and sitting to watch the waves, so the emphasis wasn’t on birding like I would have liked.

Still, I reckon we managed to do pretty well.

We saw this hooded plover family about halfway back. It was pretty exciting to see. We also saw a number of plovers converging at Barham Beach. It’s so comforting to know that the young here have a much better chance then those around Geelong.

Decent numbers of sooty oystercatchers! Annoyingly, some people have even seen a beach stone curlew recently along this stretch of coast. The area is taunting me!

We were also fortunate enough to see the striated fieldwren above. 🙂 A lifer for the little dude.

The walk was actually fantastic. I wouldn’t mind exploring the area properly and going beyond what we originally saw.

Blanket Bay – Cape Otway

I have no idea what the above bird is. I spent about an hour at Blanket Bay just trying to find the olive whistler, before giving up. Fortunately, others on the Vicbirders group couldn’t ID it either. While that sucks, it means I’m not a moron. Huzzah!

Beautiful golden whistlers.

This guy is apparently just a young common garden skink. Huh!

OLIVE WHISTLER!

I was sitting down on the side of a steep bit, trying to catch my breath. I saw this little guy and swore in my head. It was phenomenal and I wasn’t even trying. I’d spent a lot of time on previous trips trying to find this guy and here it was, just sitting out in the open. Thank you, birdy!

The birding was a tad substandard on these parts of the walk, but that was mostly because I was multi tasking to try. The first time I was watching a 7 year old and we were focusing on EVERYTHING. The second time I got so caught up in macro photography that I had to rush to catch the shuttle back.

I have read that the birds get even better along the other parts of the walk. It sounds like that if my goal is birding, I should just stay in the ONE area for a couple of hours rather then doing lots of little areas. It is a brilliant place to learn.

The Barham River Mouth has always been a family favourite. It’s a secluded little area on the opposite side of Apollo Bay. It can be a lot safer for kids to swim in here then to swim in the ocean with waves. Sethy loves walking across the shallow parts of the river so it has become a place we visit a lot.

Om the second day, we decided to walk along the Barham River from my aunts flat. We walked along the back streets of Apollo Bay and to the Caravan Park. It was a side of Apollo Bay we hadn’t seen before.

We were lucky enough to come across this beautiful night heron. I don’t know whether it was the lens or the lighting, but I got some really beautiful shots of the bird.

Going further along the river, Sethy and I were able to see a hooded plover. This is awesome, as it is a lifer for him. He loves hoodies and knows that some of my friends babysit them. I was planning on showing him some during the summer breeding season, from a distance.

Discovering this means I can cross that off his bucket list and find another adventure for us to do. For me, it was lovely to see one of my favourite birds again.

There was a shallow bit in the middle where a number of terns and a pacific gull pair congregated. Alas, no kelp gull.

Day 3:

On our last day there, we decided to go to the beach again to let Mr Sethy just be a kid. He’d had lots of kid opportunities while there but he is in love with swimming and mucking around at the beach.

A great place for photography. I could have gotten some beautiful shots if I wasn’t so sick. By this stage, I had hurt my back from coughing so much so just wanted to go home.

This was pretty cool.

Lots of beautiful pieces of driftwood around which would have been fun to photograph, as well as the setting sun.

We had been there for about 30 minutes when I saw 4 medium sized black birds land on the rocks near the mouth of the river. I walked there slowly. I was right, sooty oystercatchers! I don’t see them that often so was pretty stoked to get a chance to photograph them again. I’ve seen some brilliant photographs of them prying open shells so was hoping to get similar ones.

Alas, the camera had trouble focusing. I got some cool shots but they weren’t entirely clear. I’m thinking that the sigma lens may have been more useful in this situation. I don’t care as I got to see these birds again.

I’m not sure how great this area is for birdwatching as it had been pretty hit and miss on my visits. The birds I saw were awesome – especially the hoodie and oystercatcher. Just not sure it’s worth visiting unless you haven’t seen them recently in your area.

I *do* love the area for photography though. It’s easily within walking distance of the township. You can visit here on a walk to Marengo, or walk from here to the town. Either way is quite scenic.

Birds along the great ocean walk

Shelly Beach to Marengo

Blanket Bay – Cape Otway

Birding at the Barham River Mouth