“the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way”

The weather map showed a large high stalled over us for most of the day.  “Let’s do an evening at the Western Treatment Plant”, saith, I. “We could take down the picnic, and have a fine old evening watching the sunset over the bay, and maybe photograph a few birds, and well, just enjoy the evening sea breeze.  What thinkest thou?”.

A call to Mr An Onymous, and the famed, and legendary “Blackmobile” was on the highway loaded with his fine repast. EE and I decided on a Peri-Peri Chicken Salad, and a round of Earl of Grey.

 

Late afternoon and we entered the Kirk Point area, the road here is now halfway decent, and inspite of the efforts to control the 4WD people, we noted several places where the need to ‘get off road’, had taken over.  At the Kirk Point turnaround area, we planned on an afternoon tea, but as it turned out, an juvenile Australasian Gannet, resting in on the rocks took up most of the time.  This is a very young bird and must have flown— well let’s face it folks, it didn’t walk or swim to that location!— in with a parent bird, I’d suspect.

We took a trip down along the beach road past Lake Borrie, and there were thousands of waders at work on the outgoing tide.  Mostly Red-necked Stints, a surprising number of Curlew Sandpipers, and next to no Sharp-tailed Sandpipers.  And a few Common Greenshanks, and my wader id fails dismally after that.

Next stop was along the Little River and as Mr A opened the Gate to the upper area, EE exclaimed, “Look a Sea-eagle going over the river”,  now, this probably was true. And sure enough there it was, a White-bellied Sea-eagle going over the river. Mind, going over the river for EE is easy to see up to several hundred kilometres,  for the males standing there, going, “Where????”, it’s not quite as easy.
And then.  Oh, yes, there it is, going over the river, that tiny tiny dot, just disappearing below and reappearing above the reedbeds  half way back to Werribee.   Still it was heartening to know that it was in the area.

In the next breath, I spotted a white shape in the Japan Tree, (a tree I’ve featured many times here before), so I offered, “Instead of wasting a single pixel enlargement of that bird, why don’t we go and photograph the one in the Japan Tree”.  Blank looks for your photo colleagues is not very encouraging.

So without further discussion we motored on in fine fashion toward said tree, and found, yes, would you believe it, said Sea-eagle, sitting on said branch.  All’s well.

Mr An Onymous offered one of  his technical secret tricks for sneaking up on a Sea-eagle.  “Park the car on the upside of the road, near the fence,’ Says he.  “Aye,” Says I.

And the bird stayed.  Well done Mr A. Mark that up as a theory that is supportable by evidence.

Of course EE and Mr A were well out of the car, and filling up memory card space, and as I settled the lens on the door and began to egress, the eagle, growing tired perhaps of all the attention, threw.  Right behind the open door of the car. Result. Bird 1 Me, 0.  I managed to get the car door out of the way, in about a century and a half, by which time said bird was quite the distance beyond the river. But at least I got one inflight shot.

Onwards.

Another sighting of an eagle at the Borrow Pit, but before we could do much, it too had disappeared. Time for that wonderful picnic.

And as we approached the little bridge over the outflow near Little River, there, behind the iron supports on the bride.  Brolga.  And into the sunlight they flew.  Well at least we got a sighting.

Picnic over we made a run to Lake Borrie, to watch the sunset behind pelicans.  And a fine sight it made too.

Talking of serendipitous,  I got a note from WordPress, the venerable publisher of this blog.  They have developed a little plugin for Lightroom which automatically transfers selected images to the blog.

So by courtesy of WordPress, and of course my inquisitive nature to see if it works, (and it does, else this page would not have happened), here are a few images from our adventure.