Australian Spotted Crake – Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER doesn't mean I'm LOST

Mr An Onymous dropped me an email, saying he had booked for a Wetlands Birds and Port Phillip bay Seminar complete with field trips. The event was for 10 Satuday mornings and trips to local areas to look for birds and the features of the seminar topic for that day.

So I booked. Thought I’d take the train down to the location as the talkfest was at a library quite near the station, and Mr An had offered to provide Uber support to get to the trip locations.

Fascinating few sessions that covered the history and development of the geology, geography, water systems and the like. Helped get a good picture of why some waders and migrants visit some spots and not otherr.
The area around the top end of the Bay has undergone signifcant housing and manufacturing development, and has to put it just blunty, been not very kind to the vast network of wetlands, swamps and backwaters in the area. Also fascinating has been some of the attempts to overdevelop the beach areas.
Credit also has to be given to the council and community groups and the research projects that have been conducted. Even if at times it seems that each group has both a different goal and plan to achieve their outcomes.

So with lots of numbers and ideas along with data about the areas flying around in my brain, we set off to visit the trip areas. Of course, not before, the necessary cuppa and bikkie to sustain us for the “Expotition” (Winnie the Pooh)

In all we visited 10 locations—didn’t find the North Pole
.One was opposite Mr An’s house and the last one was at Point Cook Coastal Park which is beginning to become our new ‘office’.

Here’s a sampling of the days outings.
Oh, and I did enjoy the clickyclack on the railway track as I’ve not been train bound for a number of years.

Enjoy

I was writing to Mr An Onymous t’other day about the weather, or lack of it in fine proportions, and lamenting being unable to get out in the wind and the rain.

I mentioned that I’d concluded that I’m no longer a member of the Upwardly Mobile and was rapidly sliding into the Downwardly Mobile. Just seems too hard to get out and about regularly.

Still, there is a lot to be said for quietly sitting. EE has made a science of it and half her magic comes from such experiences, I percieve.

So I thought I must take advantage of such a change in direction and rejig the blog at least one more time. Rather than look for the ‘big’ stories of bird-world/land I might just cover a few pics from one connected set of birds.
Which if I recall correctly, (and that you might want to check against para 2 above), was roughly what my journalism instructor(ess) had to say. Write the little stories with insight. The big stories can wait. (In my case they still are!) Well I might have missed her quote a bit, but the intent was the same.

After a week or more of rain, we took an opportunity between all the unimportant life missions we are on, to leave home early and head to just one location. The T-Section at the Western Treatment Plant. And to spend the morning at the “Crake Pool/Pond” For the initiated, it’s easy to find. For those who’ve never been there, its not a pool or a pond, its part of a reed bed that is on the edge of a typical, large, former waste-treatment pond.
Yet for some reason, water density, coverage, food, shelter and a host of Crakie sort of things the Baillon’s, Spotted and Spotless seem to favour. Most times they skulk (love that word) about in between the reeds and are hardly seen. At present, all bets are off and they are mostly feeding in the open.

Birders and Photographers have devised some pretty sneaky plans of their own to be able to see the birds without scaring them off.
But.
In the interests of brevity I’m going to ignore all that at this time.

We parked the car at a junction, walked the 150m or so down to the pool, and there they were. Happy in their litte Crake world and the only thing that seemed to scare them back into the reeds were a few aggressive Australasian Swamphens that kept maurauding across the open areas in pursuit of one another. They’d scare me too.

So here here we are. It’s Rained Crakes.