Lake Anderton, Chiltern

This lake, a couple of minutes drive from the house, is stocked with fish for kids to catch and I'd promised our grandson I'd take him fishing whilst I was here.  Given that most of the local water sources have dried up we called in on the way back from a trip to the shops. Sadly the lake is almost completely dry but the remaining water had attracted a huge number of waterfowl so I took the opportunity to go back with the camera. 

I'd seen Yellow-billed Spoonbill at this site previously but today there were 7 and they'd been joined by two Royal Spoonbills.

Royal Spoonbill

Yellow-billed Spoonbill

Among the spoonbills, Australian Ibis, Straw-necked Ibis, White-necked and Pacific Herons was a solitary  Australian Pelican dwarfing everything around it.

Straw-necked Ibis

The few patches of water were teeming with other waterfowl with Maned Duck and Pacific Black Duck being the commonest with a few Grey Teal among them. 

With all the birds congregating in the limited open water available it was a good opportunity to study Dusky Moorhens that were sharing the space with introduced European Coots.

On my previous visit I'd seen some small waders distantly on the muddy margins around the island in the centre of the lake and today, with the binoculars,  I could see they were Black-fronted Dotterel. 

After an hour and a half I'd had enough of the midday heat and with the temperatures hitting 40 C + I headed for the air conditioned car! 

Red - capped Robins, Bartleys Block

Bartleys Block is another local haunt of mine whenever we visit our family in Chiltern, Vic. Its part of the National Park and is an area of grassland surrounded by scrub and forest. It's a well known site locally for Speckled Warbler (see here ) and Turquoise Parrot ( see here and here ) - both of which  I saw briefly again today. My targets today were birds I'd seen listed recently on eBird - Superb Parrot and Red-capped Robin. I've seen Superb Parrot before but only distantly. Despite being relatively common I'd not seen Red-capped Robin locally.  

It's less than a 5 minute drive and I was on site by 7.00. It was still very hot even that early. Once again I was shocked at how dry everything was and dams that have been teeming with birds in previous years were bone dry.  

I found the robins in a scrubby area feeding avidly but quite flighty. Eventually they stayed still long enough for some photographs. Unfortunately they were moulting heavily and didn't look as pristine as usual.

My eyes were drawn to shapes in the sky and I was pleased to see a large flock of White-throated Needletails hawking high up for insects.

Other birds seen included Olive-backed Oriole, Satin Bowerbird and White-browed Babbler. The former two species were feeding on Mulberries left over from when the block was inhabited during the gold rush in the 19th century and was the site of a brewery until the early 20th century. The family sold the block in 1989 and it was incorporated into the Mount Pilot National Park. 

The babblers were doing babbler things... noisy foraging on the ground and flicking over dead leaves and twigs looking for invertebrates whilst keeping up a constant dialogue with other members of the family group. It was interesting to see the robins had a loose association with the babblers and pounced on insects disturbed by them from their perches

By 9.00 it was blisteringly hot and I left to get home for breakfast. The weather here has been incredibly hot. Australia is currently the hottest place on the planet. Theres a 'catastrophic' risk of bush fires and many are already burning. We've been out under a strict no fire control - no barbeques or homemade pizzas in the outdoor pizza oven. The National park is currently closed due to the fire risk so I've not been able to make a return visit to look for Superb Parrots.

Back to Australia

We left the UK on 28th December to come and spend time with our Australian family. I'm not sure what I prefer - the blazing heat here (reaching 45C) or the minus temperatures and snow back home. 

Everywhere is parched and the usual wet creek at the back of our daughter's garden is bone dry. The usual dams that retain water nearby are also drying rapidly so any standing water is a magnet for birds. 

The first couple of days were spent recovering from jetlag and getting acquainted with the local garden birds.  Red-browed Finches and Silvereyes are coming into the garden to feed and use the three bird baths that I ensure are filled daily. 

A few honeyeaters are visiting regularly with White-plumed being the commonest. Yellow-faced and New Holland Honeyeaters are also visiting but are much harder to photograph.

Yellow-faced Honeyeater

Star bird though was a distant flyover Little Eagle that I picked up being mobbed by a smaller bird of prey which turned out to be a Nankeen Kestrel. Little Eagle was new bird for my adopted local Australian patch.

Hilbre 19th December

A beautiful starlit sky guided me across to Hilbre in the dark. With an early tide I had to drive across early. With not much movement in the way of passerines this time of year attention has turned to trying to catch and colour flag Turnstone and Purple Sandpiper's as part of our ongoing study into winter site fidelity and movement within the Dee and Mersey estuaries. With very little substrate to use a whoosh net wader spring traps are used along the strand line where the waders tend to forage. 

As the sun rose and the tide flooded 1000's of Oystercatchers started congregating on the rocks between Middle Eye and Hilbre before moving t oroost on Middle Eye as the rocks got covered.

The low sun meant long shadows and this time of year the sun doesn't seem to rise properly before its setting again. The lights very flat and photographing birds quite hard they always seem to be backlit or in shadow. 

Before the  tide floods fully Brent Geese congregate at the north end and on the Whaleback, frantically feeding to make the most of the short days and exposed algae.Hearing family groups calling to each other is  lovely sound that invokes memories of my late dad taking us to Mersea Island, off the Essex, coast to see Brents when I was only about 9 or 10. 

As the tide rose higher the calls of the Oystercatchers complaining about getting flooded off their rocks filled the air and other groups of waders started moving past looking for somewhere to roost. Ringed Plover alighted briefly at the north end before flying off to find  a less disturbed spot to see out the tide.

A quick check at revealed 6 Purple Sandpipers roosting on a traditional rock ledge with another seen flying off towards Middle Eye with Turnstone. I never tire of seeing these plump little waders who travel vast distances from their arctic breeding grounds to winter around the rocky shores of Hilbre.

The three spring traps deployed were succesful with another Turnstone being added to the data base and given the flag AH. Less expected was a single Dunlin  - the first ringed on the island since 2013.

Another great day on the island and probably my last trip of 2025 as we're off to Australia to see our Aussie family just after Christmas. Happy Christmas everyone. 

Coco der Mer and Seychelles Parrots. Seychelles part 3.

One of my target species in the Seychelles was the endemic Seychelles (Black) Parrot. It was historically treated as a sub species of the one found in Madagascar and Comores it is now recognised as a separate species. Once  persecuted because of its love of cultivated fruits it's found only on Praslin and theres just over 1000 left. Its not really black but dark brown and grey. Researching best places to see it before we left home I found that the most regular place was the national park of Vaille De Mai - famous for its Coco De Mer palms. This is a living remnant of the forests that used to cover the Seychelles and is the smallest UNESCO World Heritage Site in the world. An entrance fee of SCR 450 is payable on arrival and I chose not to pay extra for a guide as I was specifically interested in the parrot and didn’t want to be rushed to anytime schedule. I'd read that the best time to get there is early morning before the crowds and the parrots are often seen near the entrance where the canopy is less dense.

Robert, our driver for the Cousin trip, offered to pick me up from the hotel and drive me the 20 minutes to the reserve and wait for a couple of hours until I returned. Skipping breakfast  I met him around 08.10 and arrived at the site when they opened 08.30. Again, I'd researched the call and was confident I'd be able to pick any parrots up on call as they're quite vocal.

Picking up my map at reception I set off and no sooner had I got through the ticket checkpoint about 100 m from the entrance then I picked up the whistling call of a Seychelles Parrot close by. I struggled to see it  until it walked down the branch it was on into view. I watched it for 30 minutes before it flew off to join others calling in the distance. A magical moment.

Continuing along the trails through the Coco De Mer forest was like taking a walk back through Jurassic times. The forest is so dense and dark it was hard to see anything and  I was followed by the calls of unseen Seychelles Bulbuls and parrots. 

By the tie I'd started making my way back to the entrance the park had got quite busy. Seeing a group looking at something high up in a tree pointed out by a guide I stopped to see what they were looking at. High up in the flowers of a Coco De Mer was a partially hidden Giant Bronze Gecko. I knew nothing about these and it wasn't until Sean Cole asked me if I'd seen one that I realised how rare they are! 

This definitely reinforced my feeling that I'd somehow been transported back in time millions of years or teleported to the film set of Jurassic Park.

Seychelles Bulbul

Back where I'd seen the parrot there were hordes of people being guided round in small groups. I picked up another distant parrot about 100 m away and tried to show it to some visitors but without binoculars it was invisible to them. Meeting up with Robert again I was back at the hotel by midday ready for lunch and a cold beer....or two......

The Seychelles are fantastic They take great pride in their endemic species and care for their environment. We'd certainly go again. Although not a big world lister I enjoy seeing new species wherever we go on holiday and on this trip ended u with 11 lifers. All to soon our trip was over and we had to return to Manchester and home to Cheshire. Leaving a warm tropical 29 C and arriving home to a cold dark 2C in Cheshire was a bit of a thermal shock.