Up ahead I notice a Australian Swamphen out in the open. Now I already have about twenty pictures of this beautiful and common bird, but the best picture I have of it was at the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne where a little girl was chasing it around a lawn. So being that I liken myself to some adventurous National Geographic Wildlife photographer who would not be caught dead with his camera in his hand at a place like that, I tell myself you need to get a legit photo of this bird and here is your chance. So we decide that I'll walk up the road and get the photo and Mim will stay behind and then pull the car up after I get the shot. I take off up the road and as I do I notice that a LBJ better known as a "Little Brown Job" sets down in the middle of the road up ahead. Turns out to be a Jacky Winter.
AUSTRALIAN SWAMPHEN
JACKY WINTER
Well this Swamphen is no park dwelling Swamphen that would allow a little girl to chase it back and forth. The funny thing about the park Swamphen is that after the girl tired of the chase, the girl's parents offered it some bread, as if to say thank you for entertaining our daughter for five minutes so we could actually have a chit chat without being interrupted fifty times. The undignified Swamphen gladly came forth and as it approached the family the little girl ran off afraid of the Swamphen. Oh my, how the tables have turned. Had to laugh.. Anyway back to Werribee. Turns out this Swamphen didn't really want to be photographed but I did get a few good shots before it slowly crept back into the reeds.
Miriam took a long time bringing up the car and when she finally arrived I asked her what took so long. She was all excited because she had found a cute little beautiful bird with a white breast and a black back and it was flitting back and forth in the grass picking up seeds and giving a cute little buzzy sounding call as it picked it's way through the short grass and it..... At this point I butted in and asked impatiently "What was it"? She looked at me like I had stirred her cup of tea with my finger and said, oh it was a White-breasted Chat and then went on saying how she had identified all by herself with no help from a snob nosed birder. She was even more excited when she leaned how much I wanted to see that bird and that now she has a bird on me! But that didn't stand for long as no more than a quarter mile ahead there were a group of birds off to the side of the road. In the same binocular view we admired a White-breasted Chat with several European Goldfinches and a Striated Fieldwren. Off to the side perched on a wooden fencepost was an Eurasian Skylark and nearby was a White-winged Triller. Down the road a bit we came across some Glossy Ibis feeding in a shallow pond,
STRIATED FIELDWREN
GLOSSY IBIS
WHITE-WINGED TRILLER
At this point the sky was growing dark and it looked like rain. So we decided to bolt for this other part of the refuge. Along the way it does begin to rain so I hit the windshield wiper stick and my right turn signal begins to blink. What the heck! This isn't heaven, it's hell! This would happen about fifty times in the next hour or two.
The rain wasn't bad, after all most of the birds we are seeing now are ducks, like the Pacific Black Duck, Chestnut Teal, Gray Teal, and Australian Shoveler. We passed a lake with many scattered wooden nest boxes mounted to poles sticking up out of the water. On top of each nest box was an Australian Pelican. I'm pretty sure this was not their casa because they were twice the size of the box. There were also many dead snags on the lake and perched on the snags were Little Black and Little Pied Cormorants. Superb Fairywrens, Brown Thornbills, and White-browed Scrubwrens were creeping through the scrub on the lake shore. Occasionally one would seat itself a top the scrub and proudly perform a song. The Little Grassbirds were all stricken with a terrible case of stage fright and preferred singing from the depths of the scrub.
LITTLE PIED CORMORANTS
Arriving at the end of the road we found a nice photo blind that was perched right on the edge of the bay shore. It was a nice refuge from the wind and drizzling rain. But there weren't many birds there to look at. Mostly Black Swans, Silver Gulls, Whiskered Terns, and a few Pied Oystercatchers. Moving on from there I did finally find a medium sized flock of shorebirds. Scoping them out I was able to find one Curlew Sandpiper who was patrolling the banks of a pond with about twenty five Sharpies. Off to the left I found a group of about thirty Red-necked Stints and I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of how many lives would be disrupted if just one of these birds showed up at Fern Ridge.
The rain and wind picked up and we were growing cold and hungry. So we called it a day and drove back and returned the key. Originally we had planned to follow birding this place with a hike in You Yangs Regional Park. But the weather was not good so we bagged that idea, got some lunch, and took off for the Great Ocean Road.
Have I mentioned how nice the people are here? Very chatty and helpful. When we stopped at this little cafe for lunch at four o'clock, no less, they were just closing up. We saw that they were stacking chairs so we did an about face but the young lady said, "no it's okay come right in, no worries". I wish there were a way to write in an Australian accent but you get the picture. As we made our way to a table some blokes were talking quite loud and having a good laugh. As we passed one asked "Where are you folks from"? Suddenly a terrible case of Trump shame enveloped me and I so badly wanted to say "were from Canada". But I was afraid that he would ask, "whereabouts in Canada mate, after all it's a big place to be from" and then I would lie again and answer, "British Columbia". Then what if he said "whereabouts in British Columbia mate, after all that's still a very big place". Then I would have to lie again and say, "Oh....ah...ah.. Vancouver??". And then what if he said "Oh I love it there. I used to live there and I used to go to this little coffee shop called Hole in the Wall, do you know it"? This time I wouldn't have to lie, "no can't say that I have heard of it" and then much to my chagrin he would ask "what part of the city are you from"? and I would have to say, again not lying, "oh we live up Shit Creek".
Which is were we'll pick up next time. Cheers mates (yes everyone here actually says that).
What the heck kind of name is Jacky Winter??
ReplyDeleteNice work picking the Curlew Sandpiper out of the flock of Sharp-tails! Yes, any of those shorebirds are welcome at Fern Ridge anytime!
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