I went for a walk at Ocean Grove Nature Reserve and the ponds are just about empty, which isn’t ideal seeing that the summer months are looming.
Let’s hope that there will be a few decent downpours of rain in the next few weeks.
I had a lovely 4km walk in the nature reserve and spotted 28 bird species, including a wedge-tailed eagle, brown falcon, a pair of sacred kingfishers, and a male mistletoe bird, which was calling constantly.
At the intersection of the Banksia Track with the North Track I saw a hapless brown thornbill busily feeding a Horsfield’s bronze cuckoo fledgling. Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoos, like other cuckoo species of birds, are nest parasites, in that they lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species that build dome nests, such as fairy-wrens and thornbills.
The female lays one egg in the host bird’s nest and when the nestling hatches, the unsuspecting host parent bird cares for the cuckoo chick like it is one of its own hatchlings. This is interesting as the cuckoo chick grows to almost twice the size of a thornbill. It’s also interesting that the cuckoo must have an innate ability to sing a cuckoo song rather than learn the sounds that are sung by a thornbill or other host bird.
On my walk about an hour later I saw another brown thornbill feeding another Horsfield’s bronze cuckoo fledgling. All of these birds were so busy and active it was impossible to take a decent photo of them.
I had never previously seen a mistletoe at OGNR, so it was great to see one.
The other outing I had over the past few weeks was a lovely lunch on my friend’s deck that overlooks the lakes at Lara. My friend Kath has often sent me photos of Cape Barren geese with fledglings at the lake and it was so lovely to check them out myself, even though I didn’t see any newly hatched stripey chicks.
On the way back from Lara I drove down Point Henry Road and saw around 42 red-necked stints on the salt flats and it was great to see these amazing migratory waders in good numbers.
I had dinner one evening at the restaurant at the end of Cunningham Pier in Geelong, and lo and behold there were two great crested grebe swimming around the pier and if I had brought my camera to dinner the photos would have been terrific. Alas the camera was at home.
I received an email from Alan, who lives in Ocean Grove. Alan reported that there have been many different birds at Blue Waters Lake over the past week, including a pair of tawny frogmouths, at least two Latham’s snipe, five cattle egrets in breeding plumage, and a sacred kingfisher.
A great crested grebe flew in one evening but was gone the next morning. There are six black swan cygnets that are nearly the size of adult birds. Alan reported that there have been lots of other birds flying around with nesting material and lorikeets checking out nesting holes.
Despite the good numbers and variety of birds at the lake, the water quality looks pretty ugly as it is very green and smelly.
Alan and his wife Anne recently went to O’Donohue’s Road, Anglesea. They walked up to Harvey Street then back down to the Surf Coast Highway. The plants were not in flower, which was a bit of a surprise for late spring. They didn’t spot any southern emu-wrens, but the highlight was an enjoyable 10 minutes with a king parrot that landed several metres away and munched on some wattle seeds.
Alan has published a book of his bird photos, mostly taken around Blue Waters Lake. All copies of the first print run of the book have been sold.
