April Field Trip

Although we are in April, this was the first field trip for the year. The trips for both February and March had to be cancelled because the scheduled days were severe fire danger days, and declared as total fire bans. The Field Naturalists don't run excursions on Total Fire Ban Days. Even if they did, we would not want to be away from the house on days like that - we need to be home, ready to evacuate if necessary.

Our first stop today was Macarthur Park Wetlands at Miners Rest.

The wetlands are not natural, but were created to deal with the run-off from an adjacent housing development. But they successfully attract many species of wildlife.

We saw lots of birds, but these were new to me:

Chestnut teal ducks (Anas castanea) looking for food amongst the azolla fern which covers a lot of the water.

The next stop on our tour, Mt Hollowback, was completely different.

It had excellent mobile phone reception! It was also incredibly windy. It's a popular spot for hang-gliders and paragliding. There were some guys up there setting up model gliders to fly, but they didn't launch them before we left.

There are great views across the volcanic plains of western Victoria:

Where everything looks very dry:

No green to be seen:

Waubra wind farm on the horizon:

Our next stop was Mullahwalla wetlands, although the wetlands were rather lacking in water:

Look - away in the distance there is still a little bit of water:

And through a telescope it was possible to identify the birds swimming there. No hope with just the camera.

We need some rain.

The last part of the excursion could not be photographed. We went for a walk in the bush after dark, searching for nocturnal birds. Our guide for the walk has done a PhD studying the tawny frogmouth. We walked for an hour or so through bushland, with only a few torches covered in red cellophane to light the way. We didn't see any birds, although we did hear an owlet nightjar at one point. But it was an amazing experience to walk silently through the bush in the dark.