Birding Lake Lorne

Today I visited Lake Lorne with a few friends, hoping to show them a variety of waterbirds. In particular, I wanted to get better photos of freckled and blue-billed ducks.
Almost immediately upon arriving at the lake, we observed large numbers of freckled ducks and pink-eared ducks, resting on a distant island, while many chestnut teal and Pacific black ducks were swimming closer to shore. A few little pied cormorants were perched high in trees on this island, and a group of Eurasian coots were grazing nearby. A lone purple swamphen was also seen. Shrubs around the lake held superb fairy-wrens, little wattlebirds, spotted turtledoves and noisy miners.

Several pink-eared ducks shared this branch with a lone freckled duck

We walked around the lake, and were able to get close views of a flock of pink-eared ducks. While passing some reeds, we spotted 2 nearby blue-billed ducks, an Australasian grebe, some black swans and several hardheads. As we finished our walk, several dusky moorhens and Pacific black ducks were seen on the lakeshore.

The pink-eared duck is a very social bird, rarely seen alone

The blue-billed duck is part of a group of ducks which all have stiff tail feathers

The Australasian grebe is one of 3 species of grebe in Victoria

Weekend in Portland

Since school holidays had begun last week, I spent this weekend in Portland. My family and I stayed one night in the town, leaving late the next day. Our main goal was to search the Lee Breakwater area for brown skua, a bird that sometimes visits the breakwater in winter. Though we were unsuccessful, we still saw a variety of other birds.

Most birdwatching was done along Lee Breakwater Road, and at the breakwater itself. Around the breakwater were many black-faced cormorants and silvergulls. A lone Pacific gull was also seen on the breakwater. We visited the breakwater 4 times, but were unable to find the skua. We later heard from a local fisherman that the skua hadn't been seen for a while. The foreshore around the breakwater held masked lapwings, kelp gulls, crested terns, little black cormorants, little pied cormorants and Australian pied oystercatchers.

The crested tern is Victoria's commonest species of tern

Kelp gulls are a recent arrival to Australia, colonising southern Victoria in the 1940s

This immature kelp gull looks totally different to the adult

The Australian pied oystercatcher is one of two oystercatchers in Australia

Black-faced cormorants are endemic to Australia

We also visited the gannet colony at Point Danger, where we saw large numbers of Australasian gannets, both at the colony and at a distance on Lawrence Rocks.

Point Danger has Victoria's only mainland colony of Australasian gannets

Thousands of Australasian gannets were resting on Lawrence Rocks