Even though it is one month into autumn, the weather still feels like summer, and the rain a few weeks ago has not been followed up by further meaningful precipitation, so the garden is dry as a chip again.
Anyone cynical about the science of global warming may change their minds after driving around the farms of the Bellarine and spotting the empty farm dams (even Donald Trump).
I haven’t seen many raptors around the Bellarine over the past few weeks, and didn’t spot any wedge-tailed eagles either, after seeing a pair with a fledgling a few times previously.
I saw a pair of nankeen kestrels at Lake Road, Connewarre when I drove down this road on my way to work. I completely forgot that the horrible duck shooting ‘season’ had commenced, and I usually give Lake Road a wide berth to avoid the shooting.
My friend Andrea Dennett subsequently informed me that currently there is no shooting allowed at Hospital Swamp, but Reedy Lake is open for the carnage.
Andrea and John Murray also provided me with hooded plover statistics for the 2025 Bellarine Peninsula breeding season. Around the Bellarine beaches there are seven breeding pairs of hoodies. A total of 19 nests were created by these pairs, resulting in 49 eggs laid. Eight chicks hatched (16 percent of eggs laid) and one of these survived to fledge.
Luckily the Surf Coast and Mornington Peninsula has a better success rate, with one pair in Anglesea successfully raising three fledglings (which is a miracle).
John Murray walked the Bellarine beaches on 151 occasions to monitor nests, and on these walks, he spotted 144 dogs unleashed in areas where the signs specify that they must be on a lead, which does indicate that signs are useless without consequences. John is certainly a ‘hoodlum’ champion.
I saw a white-necked heron at Mannerim that was in a lovely position for a photo. White-necked herons are larger in stature and less commonly seen compared to white-faced herons.
These birds stand more than a metre in height and have a white neck with two lines of black spots that run down the length of the neck. I hadn’t really noticed until I saw this particular bird that their underparts are streaked black and white.
I received a phone call from neighbours Carole and Rhonda early one morning that they had an exciting visitor to their property, namely a tawny frogmouth, that had made itself comfortable on the hose reel on the second story balcony. They were worried that the bird might have been unwell as it did not fly off when Rhonda accidentally disturbed it when she went to grab the hose, but it looked very alert and well.
Carole and Rhonda kept their dog inside all day and closed the curtains to give the tawny some privacy, and it remained on the hose reel all day until it flew off around 8pm. I’m hoping that the bird visits my garden in the near future.
