A Wagtail for Christmas

The day before Christmas, an Eastern Yellow Wagtail was reported at Balbirooroo Wetlands in Balnarring on the Mornington Peninsula. Very good news. This was a species I had unfinished business with.

Technically I'd seen an EYW twice before. Once in 2013 at Bremer Bay in WA which turned out to be a major birding fail that has been haunting me ever since and which I'd rather not talk about. I also had an unsatisfyingly brief glimpse of one flying over our group on a BBO course in Broome. I had been hoping I'd get another chance to see one - properly!

Unfortunately though I saw the post on the Australian Twitchers Facebook group too late on Christmas Eve to make it down to Balnarring that day. Luckily though the bird, which had been initially spotted on the 23rd, seemed to be hanging around with many birders seeing it on the 24th and again on Christmas morning. My mum and I hatched a plan for a Christmas afternoon twitch!

Welcome to Balbirooroo!

Balbirooroo Wetlands is actually one of my favourite birding spots on the Mornington Peninsula. There is some bushland around small wetland, and there are also two dams on the adjoining private property where most of the waterbird action usually is. And this is where the Eastern Yellow Wagtail was hanging out.

the Balbirooroo wetland

and the view over the fence

We arrived at about 4.50pm, followed the short bush track down to the wetlands and at the first break in the vegetation started scanning the muddy banks of the dams. Almost straight away a different-looking bird caught my eye. I quickly set up the scope to check and yes, the wagtail! My mum and I both got good views of the bird preening before it moved off and walked about bobbing its tail - very cute! We felt very lucky to have go onto it so quickly as other birders had waited for a few hours before seeing it.

Eastern Yellow Wagtail - phonescoped from a distance!

We were only able to watch it for a little while before it flew off to the bank of the larger dam and out of view, but I had finally resolved my issues with this species.

Now able to move on with my life, we focused on some of the other bird action on the dam. One of the highlights was the Latham's Snipe that were out and about allowing awesome views.

two of about ten I counted

and these were my first snipe for the summer

In between scanning for the wagtail and chatting to the other birders that turned up I only managed a few (quite dodgy) phonescoped images of the many birds that were around. And there were a lot - we ended up with a list of 63 species by the time we left about two hours later!

a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo was one of the many other birds that passed through

Before leaving we followed the path on the short loop of the wetlands.

this includes a nice little boardwalk section

After the successful twitch we went to have a picnic dinner (of Christmas leftovers) at Hastings pier where we made another little bird list. This list included some Little Corellas that flew down to join the Silver Gulls on the muddy beach. Corellas are weird.

spot the corellas

So it turned out to be a good, birdy Christmas Day!

I hope you had a good Christmas too and thanks for reading this year :)