Day 13, Narracoorte to Wangaratta

The first part of today’s survey was back and forth, north to south and south to north.  The wetlands extend east in the swales of the dunes for 30- 40 km. 

The wetlands, immediately east of the coast, are always salty, so they generally do not have many waterbirds. Today was no different. There were a few Black Swans, Grey Teal, Australian Shelducks, and a couple of flocks of Banded Stilts.

We then started to survey more freshwater wetlands further east of the dunes. This year, there were surprisingly few of these wetlands with water. 

The next video shows a survey of one of the few freshwater wetlands with water. 

It was then an easterly flight across an area north of the Little Desert National Park in Victoria. When there has been good rain, there are small wetlands that fill with water, but not today. The area was reasonably green but obviously not enough runoff to fill wetlands. Even the wetlands around Horsham were dry, around the Wimmera River.

As we went further east, it became obvious had more rain. Many of the small lakes which are often dry were about half full or more. And there were large numbers of waterbirds with a high diversity. This included grey teal, Australian shelduck, hardhead and coot. There were also quite a few Pacific herons.

We then went north out of the survey band and did two surveys of Lake Buloke, north of Donald. This is part of the Murray-Darling basin wetland systems that we survey each year. It has not had water for a while. The satellite imagery indicated some flooding.

Lake Buloke was about half full and very shallow. It was also spectacular for the diversity and numbers of waterbirds. There were tens of thousands, including mostly Grey Teal, Hardhead and Coot. But there were also Pink-eared Duck, Australasian Shoveler, Freckled Duck, Wood Duck and Australian Shelduck. There were also hundreds of Pied Stilts and a Straw-necked Ibis. It will be interesting to see if this system gets more water and continues to provide such good waterbird habitat.

From here, we refuelled in Bendigo. 

We then surveyed along the Campaspe River.

We then surveyed the Wallenjoe wetland system, northwest of Rochester. This is a really important and impressive wetland system. And today was no different, with tens of thousands of waterbirds. 

There was extensive habitat throughout this system, which was great to see, with lots of waterbirds.

From here, we surveyed a few large reservoirs, including sewage ponds. These always have quite a few Grey Teal, Pink-eared Duck and Silver Gulls.

It was then on to the large Waranga Basin, which had a few more Black Swans and cormorants than usual. However, it never has large densities because it doesn't provide enough food as a reservoir.

We then picked up on a few wetlands on our way east, on our way past Benalla. Then we reached the Winton wetlands, or Lake Mokoan, which were much more flooded than they have been in previous years. 

We finished the survey at Wangaratta in Victoria.