2018 Bird Photos: January 2018

Tuesday, 2 January 2018

#57 to #60 at Woodlands Historic Park, Victoria, Australia, January 3 2018

I go to Woodlands Historic Park at least once a week. It's close to home, and it's the best place nearby for both macro photography (http://2018insectphotos.blogspot.com.au) and birds. At this time of the year I'm usually more focused on finding insects, but there were a few birds around to photograph for the year list as well.

#57 White-winged Chough

#58 Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

#59 White-plumed Honeyeater

After visiting Woodlands Historic Park, I paid a quick visit to the Greenvale Reservoir Park where I found some Australian Wood Ducks for the year list.

#60 Australian Wood Duck

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Monday, 1 January 2018

A big day to start the year at the Western Treatment Plant and Serendip Sanctuary, VIctoria, Australia, January 1 2018

Every year on the 1st of January, many birders around the world go out to find as many birds as possible to start the year off with a bang. For four years in a row now I have embarked on a 'big day' on New Year's Day, each time with a different goal and focus. This year I wanted to try and photograph as many birds as I could.

The day started quite well, although it's the latest start to a New Year's Day birding outing that I have ever had - this year I got out of bed at the quite reasonable 6:30am! I made my way to the Western Treatment Plant and proceeded to the T-section ponds to look for a Pectoral Sandpiper that had been regularly seen there over the past few weeks. After a bit of a search I managed to find it, and got some average but reasonable photos.

I spent quite a lot of time in the T-section, and photographed as much as I could. I got lucky and saw a Spotless Crake, but it was too fast and flighty for a photograph. I did manage to find and photograph a few nice birds, including Australian Crake, Baillon's Crake, and a pair of Brolga

I moved on to the Western Lagoons where I picked up a few more photos, and then through to Beach Road where there wasn't much at all. I found a lot of duck species to photograph in the restricted section and also around Lake Borrie, and finished up at the Beach Road rocks where I found a few species of term, but very, very few roosting waders.

It was lunch time and I decided to move on from the Treatment Plant. I had found 77 species and photographed 51 of them. Actually, I photographed more, but the photos were pretty much unusable as anything even slightly distant was severely affected by heat haze.

After eating, I headed to Serendip Sanctuary, where I managed to pick up a few more species. I planned to stay longer and then go to the You Yangs and find even more birds, but unfortunately I had filled the memory card and couldn't take any more photos. I usually bring a spare, but I had accidently left it at home. A reasonable day's effort, in the end I saw 85 and photographed 56 in about 6 hours worth of birding.

For the rest of the year, I will be doing a very casual photographic year list. No racing around to find as much as I can. Just photographing what's there wherever I happen to be.

#1 - #51 - Western Treatment Plant - http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S41485396