Day 21, Tibooburra to Tibooburra 

We expected lots of habitat and waterbirds, but probably less extensively flooded than last year, when the big Cooper Creek flood came through. 

The below video shows taking off from the Fort Grey airstrip, northwest of Tibooburra, for Innamincka, where we refuelled and picked up a videographer from the South Australian Arid Lands Board. He was coming to film us for a piece on our aerial survey of Coongie Lakes. 

We headed northwest to survey a series of floodplains between the dunes of the lower Cooper. This was where water had flooded the swales. The water had dried back quite a bit since last year, but there were lots of Glossy Ibises, Coots, and Grey Teals among the flooded Blackbox trees.

We then followed the main river channel of the north arm of Cooper Creek up to the northwest to the Coongie Lakes complex. 

The floodplains were shallow, with waterbirds spread across them, including many different species. It was spectacular. There were Grey Teals, Hardheads, Swamphens, egrets, and Glossy Ibises in large numbers, with smaller pockets of Pied Stilts, Pink-eared Ducks, Black Ducks, and small grebes. 

The large freshwater lakes are the more permanent areas of water here. They were a muddy brown colour and probably quite deep. They didn't have nearly as many waterbirds as the shallow lakes and floodplains, which were drying back. 

We hugged the shoreline of the large lakes, which was where all the waterbirds were in the shallows. 

The drying floodplain was where the action was. It was exciting but exhausting, a survey that took four hours. These floodplains show incredible variation in hues of brown and green as the water dries back. 

The large lakes were linked to the floodplains, creating an amazing mosaic of water and recently flooded areas. Among the many tens of thousands of waterbirds, I saw two Magpie Geese. I can’t remember seeing them this far inland before. They are one waterbird species which seems to be making a comeback in the south and now maybe the inland.

These usually have more waterbirds than the big freshwater lakes, because the water clears with the salt, allowing the light to penetrate where aquatic plants grow on the bottom. There were thousands of Grey Teals, coots, Hardheads and Black Ducks, with lots of Black Swans, Wood Ducks and hundreds of flocks of feeding Pelicans and Pied Cormorants on the really large lakes. 

The below video is surveying the complex mixture of large freshwater lakes and drying floodplains. A rookery of nesting Pied Cormorants was on one of the lakes, along with many Great, Little Black, and Little Pied Cormorants. There were also some large flocks of Grass Whistling Ducks in the hundreds, densely packed on the shoreline at various places. Among them was a dingo, its feet in the water. We worked our way, zigzagging across the different lake systems, with their intricate patterns of flooding and drying.

We came across an island where hundreds of Pelicans had obviously been breeding. They were evenly spaced out across the island. These islands are obviously a key place for Pelicans to breed. There was no sign of breeding today. They must have bred recently. There was no sign of any of them on eggs. There were also a few dead pelicans, quite usual for big breeding events like this one. We assumed most were adults or fully fledged young. 

We then headed back to Innamincka and the banks of the Cooper Creek and soon after left to head back towards Tibooburra. 

On the way back, we surveyed Lake Pinaroo, a Ramsar-listed wetland in Sturt National Park. It had relatively few waterbirds.