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.