Birds of the Wallagaraugh

 I went on a cruise with Mallacoota Cruises on the Gipsy Princess from Gipsy Point up the mighty Wallagaraugh River. This followed a cruise which I missed on Monday.  Here is the route we followed.

A White-bellied Sea-Eagle (first of three for the trip) was a good start. 

It is unusual -according to Dale, whose farm is just upstream from this sandbar - to see a Black-fronted Plover here.

A good breeding record.

This shows the eBird records for Black Bittern.  

It is a skulker, in a very skulky subset of birds.  Some members of the Mallacoota Birds FB group have tried many times, unsuccessfully, to find this bird.  I think this was about my 4th or 5th attempt.  As we went under the bridge I saw a black, Bittern-looking bird in the vegetation.  Bingo: I didn't get a really good view of the whole bird, nor a photo-op, but good enough to be sure  had seen this species.  A lifer.

Back to normal: Great Cormorant.

Azure Kingfishers have been a little sparse recently but this one posed nicely above some evidence that it often uses this spot.

Two Welcome Swallows - I took the photo so why not use it.

This Google Sheet contains all the species seen on this trip and the one on the previous Monday.  As the earlier trip included nearly all very keen expert birders it is not surprising they recorded more species : I am surprised the Thursday trip missed those highlighted in yellow.  It is possibly more surprising that the later trip, with a more generalist set of passengers, recorded 10 species not seen by the guns especially the two species high-lit in green.