Ben Cruachan – natural history

We’re just back from three days with family at the Surf Coast, it was mainly a working trip, but my son and I found time to do a little birding. Our first call was at a little wetland at Airey’s Inlet, where the birds were very cooperative. I’ve taken lots of photos of the Dusky Moorhen, but haven’t really been happy with any of them. That changed with this shot, to my way of thinking it illustrates the personality of the bird.

For once conditions were good for taking photos, calm, sunny, blue sky, a perfect early spring day.

The special bird in this area is the Rufous Bristlebird, often heard, but it’s sometimes hard to catch more than a glimpse of it as it scuttles into the heath. After the wetland we decided to go to Point Addis to scan the ocean for albatross, and as we pulled into the carpark I remarked that it would be hoping for too much to see a bristlebird. As the motor stopped we looked over the bonnet to see one right in front of us on the edge of the cliff. For the next quarter of an hour we watched a pair as they fossicked for food around the edge, and on the sealed surface of the carpark. This one walked underneath the vehicle and stood still for long enough to be photographed.

The breeze was light, but nevertheless we saw the odd albatross far out to sea, too distant to make an identification, but we decided to return early the next morning when the stronger overnight breeze might bring them closer in.
Sure enough, next morning the wind was stronger, and as we looked out we could see plenty of albatross wheeling and dipping over the swells. There was one floating on the surface too, and as I trained the scope on it three more flew into the field of view. They were still quite distant, but from the detail of the under-wings we decided they were probably Yellow-nosed Albatross.
The birds were possibly three kilometres or more away, but on a whim I took two frames of one as it wheeled. When I blew them up on the computer when we returned home, there was enough detail to see the diagnostic markings of a Wandering Albatross, a great sighting. The Bristlebirds appeared too, and we got a few more shots before time beat us and we had to leave. I’ve put eighteen of the pictures I took into the gallery, you can see them here.
I’d been asked to lead the Sale Field Naturalists on an excursion to Swallow Lagoon Reserve tomorrow, and to try to find something special for them to see, C. and I went over this afternoon (after the morning’s working bee at Bellbird Corner) to look for a colony of Large Pointed Greenhoods that James had told me about. He sent me a Google Earth placemark of the approximate location, and said that they were behind a bush near some wire. Well, I knew the wire as Peter and I had tidied it up, but there were a few hundred shrubs in the bush beside the clearing, and we thought we’d be lucky to find the colony. While C searched near the vehicle, I walked south for a hundred metres, then turned for another sweep on the way back. The orchid is a hybrid between the Nodding Greenhood and the Sickle Greenhood; I walked past carpets of nodders but reached C. without finding what we were looking for. “Come on”, I said, “we’ll do another sweep to the south”, and after going only a short distance we skirted around an Acacia paradoxa, and there they were, large pointeds growing in association with nodders, beauty! Out came the camera and I got pictures of a number of individuals, here’s one, click on it for a larger picture.


I’m meeting the Field Nats at ten tomorrow, if the weather’s good we should have a good day, I tell you, it’s all go!