Ben Cruachan - natural history

The survey was on again this last weekend, Peter and I did our bit with the usual result, we are slowly coming to the conclusion that the name should be taken literally, they’re just a nicely painted picture in a book! Never mind, the occasion is always a good excuse to go out birding, and we certainly had a great time yesterday. We started off with the Dowd’s Morass site, the water level was low and conditions didn’t look good at all, that was borne out by the lack of birds of any sort, with a pair of Masked Lapwings the only inhabitants. Salt levels are obviously increasing, the Swamp Paperbarks are dieing off at an alarming rate, and the trial plantings were just skeletons in the water. We drove on to the river for morning tea, and could have sat in our folding chairs all morning, Striated Pardalotes were calling from the old redgums, Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes and Olive-backed Orioles were courting, Eastern Rosellas were checking out the hollows, and Tree Martins were hawking for insects. A Horsfield’s Bronze-cuckoo we’d sighted briefly near the marsh was there too, occasionally giving a very passable imitation of a Brown
Thornbill’s call, something I hadn’t encountered before. Looking over to the lagoons on the other side of the river we could see a large number of Whiskered Terns over the water, and immediately began to make plans to come down river in the boat for a closer look at them.
Our second site is in the Heart Morass, and things were much different there, fresh water and lush vegetation, and as soon as we started our traverse, Latham’s Snipe began to burst out of the low cover with their “chek” call, flying off with the characteristic zig-zagging flight. There were some Sharp-tailed Sandpipers and Common Greenshanks there too, while overhead a pair of Whistling Kites and a Swamp Harrier were circling, one kite making passes at the harrier which turned over to present its talons in defence.
It was lunchtime by the time we’d finished, and we were soon on our chairs again in the shade of a redgum at the next site which is only a short distance away. We walked through it after lunch, once again with no result, but we had wonderful views of several Royal Spoonbills with their breeding plumes lifting in the breeze. There was a White Ibis working along the edge of a mudbank, and to our surprise it caught an eel about ten inches long that went headfirst down the hatch after a bit of juggling, quite a contrast to the cockchafer grubs it consumes in the irrigated paddocks. You’d have thought it would have been satisfied after a meal like that, but no, it kept on foraging.
Now for the best bit, on the way to the entry to the morass we’d stopped to look out over the water in the adjoining private property, and had seen plenty of Whiskered Terns there too. We also noticed that we could enter the morass via a gate at the dividing fence, and that’s what we did. Down at the water’s edge we had wonderful views of the terns flying and dipping down to the water, while Black-winged Stilts waded in the shallow water, occasionally flying past to new territory.

In the reeds, Clamorous Reed-Warblers (I still like the older name) were singing, we could hear the plaintive three note call of Little Grassbirds, Golden-headed Cisticolas in gorgeous breeding colour were clinging to swaying reed-heads, and White-fronted Chats were working over the moist ground. Peter suggested we follow the track further to the left, we did so, and accessed the water again through the reeds to set up the scope for a look to the east. Peter was scanning through his bins while I ’scoped, and at the same moment we saw them, a flock of Glossy Ibis on the far shore, a life-list tick for both of us. I’ve looked for them without success on trips to the north of the state, and now here they were in front of us only twenty five kilometres from home, thanks once again I suppose to the widespread drought.

We decided to try and get closer, so we walked east for another fifty metres, and while I tried to force my way through an endless bank of eight foot high reeds, Peter used his head and found a duck shooters track to the water. We still weren’t close enough, so started wading towards the flock through the shallow water, stopping from time to time to look through the scope, and take pictures. There were about forty birds in total, and at one stage we thought we’d lost them when they took off, but after a few circuits they landed and we continued on. Finally we’d closed to about fifty metres, and they were becoming wary, so we stopped to take our last pictures, the water only inches from the tops of our rubber boots, while Whiskered Terns flew past too close to focus. The photos were taken at still too great a range through the shimmer over the water, but this one manages to show the colour of these unusual visitors.

Seconds later they were off, and we started the wade back to the shore with grins on our faces. We did one more brief search, at Flooding Creek where Painted Snipe used to be seen before the development of Lake Guyatt, again no luck, but two Spotless Crakes showed briefly before disappearing into the reeds. I took out a count sheet before going to bed, from memory ticking off 66 species for the day, and they were just the ones noticed incidentally while doing our searches, a wonderful day’s birding.