Truganina Wetlands

I've begun visiting a different local bird spot in Altona, called Truganina Wetlands. It's frustratingly close to Cheetham Wetland - a place people aren't allowed in without a permit (despite the lack of fencing and constant invasion from dog-walkers), but it's a great spot in its own right. I was put onto it in December last year when Mike Weston showed me around Altona. I didn't think too much of it at the time (Mike only showed me the place because it looks out over Cheetham), however a recent report of Pallid Cuckoo there had me think again. Another local birder, Dave Torr, mentioned it could also be good for crakes at the right time of year, and these two pieces of information combined have convinced me to give the place a go. And I'm glad I did, because just last week I hit upon a great run of birds.

It started off pretty well. As I pulled into the carpark I found a Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo calling on the telephone wires overhead. This is a migratory species, and only just freshly back from their wintering grounds in northern Australia. Amid the usual wetland birds (Teal, Ducks and Grebe) there were Little Grassbirds and an Australian Reedwarbler calling. Like the Bronze-Cuckoo, the Reedwarbler is a migratory species, and would only just have arrived in the area.

A walk out to Laverton Creek nearby didn't provide much of interest, but on the return journey along the edge of Cheetham Wetlands I flushed a Crested Shrike-Tit from a knee-high bush while I was tracking down a calling Pallid Cuckoo. Forget the cuckoo for now, the Shrike-Tit is a pretty impressive bird to get in suburbia anywhere. They also typically don't come down to ground level, so to flush one from a bush barely reaching my knee was pretty extraordinary. He (the males are obvious because they have a black bib where the females have a green one) sat in a slightly higher bush for a minute or two before hopping onto a nearby crossbranch to pose nicely for a few photos.

After I'd had my fill of photographing the Shrike-Tit, I tracked down that Pallid Cuckoo that was calling. Initially the bird was very cagey, flying when I got too close to it. Normally I'm pretty good about getting near birds, and if I'm disturbing them I back off. But the cuckoo was flying before I got anywhere near it. In the end I gave up and started walking back. At which point the cuckoo landed in a nearby tree and sat and posed while I got some very satisfying shots.

While I didn't manage to find any rails or crake on this trip, I had a very good run of luck with birds and photographs, and came away with a number of species I'd not seen in Altona before, so it was a very successful day.

Chris