Day 11, Sydney to Warrnambool

It was a bleak morning, with low cloud and scudding rain at Bankstown Airport in Sydney. After a brief handover from the previous crew, we were going nowhere. It wasn’t until about 12.30 pm that we eventually got in the plane. Even then, we couldn’t fly over the Sydney supply dams and Lake Illawarra as we usually do. The delay required some re-planning for the week to see where everything might fit in, given the loss of half a day. 

We flew on instrument flight rules (regulations that allow pilots to operate an aircraft using cockpit instruments and electronic navigation signals rather than outside visuals) until we could come down through the cloud at Moruya. 

We then flew over Wallaga Lake, which was glassy. It only had a handful of birds, including a few Swans.

There is a series of estuaries, down near Bermagui, with their oysters in rows, which we surveyed. At most, they had the odd cormorant, some Swans and White-faced Herons. Not much diversity or numbers.

Surveying Lake Denison, which is one of the ephemeral lakes on the coast, south of the Gippsland Lakes. 

The area of the ephemeral lakes down here was only about 20-30% covered by water and very shallow. There were only small numbers of waterbirds, just a few Grey or Chestnut Teal, Swans and the odd Australian Shelduck. 

About this time, the cloud, rain and wind were getting up. Unpleasant flying. We surveyed the odd dam around Leongatha before pushing on to Phillip Island. On the way, there were flocks of Straw-necked Ibis flying west. They can often nest near Rhyll in a swamp, but not today. Phillip Island had a few hundred Cape Barren Geese. Their numbers seem to keep increasing. 

We diverted to Mud Islands to capture photos of any breeding Pelicans (see image at top of page). There were a few hundred nesting on the islands and a few thousand Straw-necked Ibis, Silver Gulls and probably Australian White Ibis. We had found where the Straw-necked Ibis were flying.

The video below shows surveying the Curdies Inlet, where there were only a few Swans and Great Cormorants.

From here, we flew over the various lagoons to the west. These are scattered along the way and always have quite a few Australian Shelduck, Grey Teal, Black Swans and Pacific Black Duck. Just the usual numbers today. 

We finished up at Warrnambool. It had been a long day, getting in at 7 pm, but we managed to do most of what was planned, apart from a section around Cooma, which we will pick up on Friday this week.