I have been at Ocean Grove beach at 19-20W helping look after the two hooded plover chicks.
The chicks seem to be thriving, but they are not out of the woods yet, as they are about a week from fledging. Once the chicks can fly they have a chance to escape predators, but before that they are very vulnerable to dogs, cats, foxes, gulls and kestrels.
I’ve seen a few kestrels flying around the habitat, but they have mainly been hunting over the dunes and not the beach, thank goodness.
One evening when I was driving to Geelong as I was working the night shift, I had a wonderful experience of seeing five wedge-tailed eagles in the space of 30km.
I talked to Tom Fletcher recently about how many pairs of wedgies he thought may live around the Bellarine, and he told me that he thought that there were three pairs. I think I proved that Tom was correct, as I saw a pair flying over Swan Bay Road, then a single bird flying over Grubb Road on the way to Drysdale, and then a pair resting on the power lines at Point Henry. I was so ecstatic.
Also on the power lines but in Moolap I saw a peregrine falcon, and then a few days later I spotted one in Leopold on a telephone tower.
Another raptor I had a very close encounter with was an Australian hobby in Swan Bay.
On the way home from Melbourne, I had a quick visit to the Western Treatment Plant where I saw a female brolga with an immature brolga. This young brolga is a few weeks old, and it is almost fully grown now but can not fly as yet.
I’ve also seen a few dusky woodswallow fledglings at Curlewis and Leopold.
I received an email from Carole, who observed a pair of black-fronted dotterels feeding on the edge of Lake Lorne. Both birds did not seem to be at all shy, and happily fed in the mud while Carole watched.
Dotterels are small plovers or wading birds. I have seen a pair of black-fronted dotterels in Maddens Lane, Marcus Hill, and for the second year in a row they have successfully raised a fledgling in the same paddock.
I received an email from Kevin, who photographed a rainbow lorikeet (and a bee) in a flowering gum tree in his garden. Kevin also sent me a great photo of a superb fairy-wren that he spotted along the Barwon River. Kevin reported that there were about 20 fairy wrens along a stretch of the river.
Gerald and Robyn wrote to me to report that the black swan family that they spotted at Begola Wetlands was thriving, in that they saw one adult swan with three cygnets which were much bigger than a month ago and about one-third the size of the adult.
On the subject of Begola Wetlands, Brendan Hellard reported that there were a whopping 82 Latham’s snipe at Begola Wetlands a few weekends ago. I’m sure the fence around this wetland helps to provide some protection for the birds and leads it to be one of the premier locations to see Latham’s snipe in Victoria.
I received an email from Alan, who tested out his new camera at Blue Waters Lake. Alan noticed that the birds were very active on a still and sunny morning, and he saw many dragonflies, a juvenile white-faced heron, an eastern rosella, and he took a photo of a pelican on the platform in the middle of the lake.
Alan also was lucky to see one of my favourite birds – a sacred kingfisher on the south side of the lake.
I received an email from Evan, who spotted a small flock of whiskered terns flying over a field between Barwon Heads and Lake Connewarre.
While traveling just before sunrise out of Barwon Heads on the main road, along the avenue of trees there, Evan says that he was suddenly guided along by a flock of whiskered terns. They were flying at about treetop height just in front above the car and stayed in the roadway for a flash of time. They were clocked at 83km/h.
I received an email from Charles, who has been observing a small flock of little corellas on the Telstra phone tower near Home Hardware in Ocean Grove. The corellas can interfere with the cables on these structures. Sometimes driving to work there are several hundred of these birds in a paddock in Moolap.
