Ben Cruachan – natural history

I was all loaded up yesterday afternoon, ready to go and do some work on the memorial we are setting up for the lone grave, but thought I would just check the email before I left. In came a letter from a fellow birder, telling me that Victoria Lagoon was hot, with hundreds of Little Terns, Red-necked Avocets, Banded Stilts, Double-banded Plovers, and thousands of Red-necked Stints. There was also a reported sighting of a possible Greater Sand Plover.
What did I do? Yes, I rang Peter, and within half an hour we were on our way with rubber boots, binoculars, scope and cameras. Just on 3 PM we rolled down the track to the lagoon and looked out on to the mud flats to see …. nothing. There was not a wader to be seen, but when we looked away to the right we could see white rafts of birds which had to be the avocets and stilts. “Don’t worry Pete” I said, “the waders will probably be around the corner to the left, we’ll go and have a closer look at the others first and then come back for the waders”

Where are all those birds you promised me Dunc?

Well, we did get good looks at the avocets and stilts, gorgeous birds both, although they weren’t in the reported numbers, and then trudged back and around the corner to find, in the distance, one small flock of about fifty stints. Where were those thousands Ken mentioned in his email, and where were those Double-banded Plovers, just over from New Zealand. “I know where they’ll be” quoth I, “in the swamp behind the store”. “But first we’ll cross over the mudflat and look around the south and western shores just in case there are some there.” Out we went on to the flat, sinking about three inches with every step into the black, glutinous, highly fragrant mud. The aroma was rich and strange as we stirred it up, countless millions of birds had certainly left a reminder of their time spent feeding, and, well, you know what.

Not drunk, just looking for firm ground.

Alas it was all in vain, little to see, although away on the far shore to the north we could see a long line of smaller white birds which we guessed were the Little Terns. Back into the sludge, with my guiding reputation severely frayed, and we could see by the myriad of tracks that the birds had been there recently, and there were also the tracks of a big old man ‘roo, three metres between each set of prints, so the gluey mud hadn’t held him back.

Into the car and on to the swamp, more trudging through sticky stuff to see another small flock of stints, some Red-capped Dotterels, and a nice lot of White-fronted Chats, but no Double-banded Plovers. A bonus though was a nice adult Sea Eagle cruising over, missing a flight feather from its left wing.
I had one chance left to try and salvage some credibility, there is a track running in to the northern part of the lagoon, and although it was getting late we thought we’d look there before heading home. Leaving the car on dry ground half way in, we walked to the shore, and finally we had birds. In front of us, and stretching away to the north were those thousands of stints, avocets and stilts galore, and perhaps best of all, a great flock of Little Terns. They were right on the shoreline, and they sat placidly as we walked up on them and set up the scope to drink in the sight of those beautiful small terns that have been having very indifferent breeding success over the last few years. A very rough count indicated that there were well over five hundred birds in the flock, with many more perched on snags and duck hides out in the water. We also had wonderful close up views of the avocets, swimming and dipping their upturned bills into the water for brine shrimps. The Double-banded Plovers however were still nowhere to be seen, perhaps they had moved to wetlands further to the west, oh well, we’ll just have to go there too and find them, it’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. I won’t tell you about desperately trying to turn a distant immature chat into a plover, I wonder if my grandson will lend me his Harry Potter wand next time. With the light fading we hiked back to the car with a Grey Butcherbird’s rollicking call in our ears, it had been a disappointing outing to start with, but we’d certainly finished in a blaze of glory!