Werribee Story

Geoff

What's that duck below the flying phalarope?
(pale eye-ring and face)

cheers
Richard

"Geoffrey Dabb" <>

10/11/2006 10:32 AM

To	<>
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Subject	[canberrabirds] Werribee Story

I spent most of the last couple of weeks
in Victoria, in particular checking the waders at Werribee Water Treatment
Plant, a vast wetland on Port Phillip Bay between Geelong and Melbourne.
 Some of you will be familiar with it.  To start, would you like
to try identifying the flying birds in this photo:

The main point of interest here is not the
Black-tailed Godwits but the Red-necked Phalarope in breeding plumage,
passing abeam of the right-hand swan.   There’s a little story, starting
on Monday 30/10, after I’d battled the peak-hour traffic to acquire my
bird-watching permit and shiny new key.   I felt my way along, mainly
by seeing which gates would yield to my key, and by late morning found
myself by a lagoon listening to four ‘watchers in a minibus discussing
whether the godwits were bar-tailed or black-tailed.  Then along came
Ralph, who’d been having a ‘watch at the You-Yangs, and he said ‘Have
you seen the phalarope?’ to which I replied ‘What phalarope?’.  It
turned out an RNP had been hanging around for some months but had, strangely,
just acquired breeding plumage in the ‘austral Spring’ (as the waders
would call it if they read the books) and Ralph was keen to see it in its
new colours.  There weren’t any phalaropes there just then so Ralph
drifted off.  I spent most of the day accumulating material for my
‘variations in the non-breeding Sharp-tailed Sandpiper’ series that I
might inflict on you next time the ‘are you sure that’s a Sharp-tailed
Sandpiper’ discussion occurs.
 
At about 5pm I was leaving and stopped to
watch some feeding avocets in about the last pond, when I noticed a smaller
bird trailing around after them.  This, it turned out, was not a young
avocet, but the phalarope.  When I say it was associating with the
avocets, I mean it was REALLY associating with them, thus:

It was very windy and the light wasn’t all
that good.  Barbara and Joy came by and I pointed out the phalarope
to them, and it turned out that they had been keeping an eye on it for
some months.  When it took flight with the avocets they were able
to follow it with their binos as it described a great wheeling loop (more
than I could do) and came down at a more distant point on the pond.  I
should mention, if you don’t know, that this is a pretty small bird  -
 about the size of a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, but of more slender build.
 
I was there for the next couple of days but
didn’t see the phalarope again, until last Saturday when I was driving
out along the track that runs by the Little River (which, you may be aware
is the very geographical feature after which the band was named, although
some say it was the railway station) when someone driving the other way
pulled over to let me past.  I said to him, having learned that this
was the customary greeting on coming across other local students of the
avifauna, ‘Have you seen the phalarope?’.  To my surprise he said
‘Actually, yes, it’s about 2 or 3 lagoons back on the right’.  
 
So that was when I took the first snap above,
and the one below.

Actually, I only took a couple of stills,
because I wanted some video of the unusual swivel-and-peck method of feeding
but I took  a few minutes to assemble my longest-possible lens arrangement
and then I only got a few seconds of footage before the little chap flew
off.  
 
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