Black-shouldered Kites in the Mallee

The Black-shouldered Kites have had a good breeding season by the looks of the fully-fledged and independently hunting juveniles as well as the mature adults around Ouyen.
Further afield they continued to appear, and providing a few photo opportunities.

Black-shouldered Kites

An afternoon at Werribee Treatment Plant

Camera, binos, food, drink - time to go. Picked up Pete about 1 pm and we headed off to Werribee. Dreams of a nice warm day with a light breeze were quickly dashed upon arrival as the wind rushing through the windows when we slowed for the first birds blew Pete's cap off. We decided to head down to Gate 4 and come back to Gates 1 and 2 later.

There were a few target species for me, mainly the ducks that don't visit Alice Springs - Musk and Blue-billed, as well as Freckled which we occasionally get in Central Australia. Pete had brought his scope, and our first stop inside the gate using the scope confirmed suspicions of Freckled Ducks sitting on an small boulder island. Tick, we were away. The wind made it difficult to use the scope but we did manage to I.D. a few others with the scope including the Bar-tailed Godwits which were too far away for binoculars or cameras to correctly I.D. One of the highlights was watching a male Musk Duck display and whistle for a nearby female. The bird hide was at least open, but the nearby seaweed aroma made birding for too long at once a bit of a challenge.

In all for the day were 70+ species, and probably a few more if we had been better with our wader I.D.

Here are a few of the better photos, as the wind made even photography quite hard for most of the time.

Musk Duck - weird sound, weird head, weird tail, just weird really!

Blue-billed Duck

Freckled Duck

Cape Barren Goose was a nice surprise

Pete on the hunt for a Whiskered Tern in flight shot

You Yangs

Straw-necked Ibis in their hundreds at sunset

A beautiful sunset to finish the day

Powerful Owl and a Red-browed Treecreeper to kick the year off

I sit writing this totally exhausted but very happy. I'd forgotten about the Victorian style of bird-watching - walking through tall forests and getting a sore neck from looking up into the canopy, but it was worth it. 7 hours of walking and searching, and in the 7th hour came one of my long-term targets - the Powerful Owl.

My obsession really started from a PodCast you can probably still download off the ABC website - "Birdbrain" by Steve Abbott, absolute listening gold as far as I am concerned. He has 10 episodes and in one he finds a bird missing its head, "the victim of a Powerful Owl!" Since hearing this, I have always wanted to see what sort of bird rips the head off its victim. And then, during a recent conversation, my friend Pete said he had seen one up in the Dandenongs. It was a chance too good to miss. He sent me the directions and I followed them as best I could. Down the stated path, a wrong turn to start, then following the directions a bit closer I found myself in a very wooded part of the track, but the trees were only about 6 metres high (as opposed to the 40 or so metres I had been looking at throughout the day.

On previous "twitches", I have not had any success, ever. So my expectations were quite low. Birds do fly so I figured I probably wasn't even in the right spot, let alone the bird still being there, or observable. And then I saw it. I knew they were supposed to be big, but its size still took my breath away. Sitting low enough, big enough, and virtually foliage free. I know the first 20 or so photos were terrible, thank goodness it wasn't flighty. I then calmed down enough to get a few decent shots. Thank you so much Pete, and to a lesser extent Steve.

Powerful Owl

Earlier I had been at Bunyip State Park. There were a few target species, and I managed to fluke at least one of them. I had just seen and photographed a Rufous Fantail. I have seen these before but never managed a photo. I was pretty pleased with myself until I realised high ISO setting make for wonderful photos of birds in flight in blue sky, freezing the action, but terrible in foliage! Damn! Very disappointed when I downloaded those images. Fortunately, the Red-browed Treecreeper was out in the open, and I was a bit confused by the juvenile at first (until I checked the Pizzey and Knight app) and did manage some half decent photos. A wonderful start to another year of birding!

Red-browed Treecreeper

Pacific Gull with a crab

This Pacific Gull was having a little bit of trouble getting the crab into the right position to swallow it. I was intrigued watching the whole process from catching the crab to finally swallowing it, with the crab fighting back at one stage by hanging on to the Gull's beak.