Laratinga Wetlands, Mt Barker, South Australia
Laratinga Wetlands, Mt Barker, South Australia
One of the best places for birding near my home is the Laratinga Wetlands on the eastern edge of Mt Barker in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. It is just over a half hour drive from my home. I have featured birds from this spot on a number of occasions in the past – you can access them by using the search facility above.
While these wetlands are actually the sewage treatment works for the town of Mt Barker, the area is very pleasant and well landscaped. The treated water comes out in the final pond as reusable for local irrigation purposes. The various ponds have wide, flat walking and cycling tracks around them with plenty of seats to rest and just watch the birds. Hundreds of nearby resident use these paths daily for walking, jogging or cycling and many of them also use the barbecue and picnic facilities.
I’m not going to write about the many birds seen here; I will keep that for the coming days. Instead, I am just going to show some photos taken on a recent visit.
Good Birding.
Trevor
Picnic area, Laratinga Wetlands, Mt Barker, South Australia
Picnic area, Laratinga Wetlands, Mt Barker, South Australia
Reflections, Laratinga Wetlands, Mt Barker, South Australia
Birding in the Narrandera region
Wetlands at Narrandera, New South Wales
Sydney Trip report June 2011
I’ve been really slow getting these trip reports written and posted here; life has been busy and demanding. (I’m supposed to be retired – whatever that means.)
On our return leg from a holiday in Sydney in June of this year we stopped for one night at Narrandera. It’s an area I’d like to stay in for a week or more. The caravan park looks very inviting; we stayed in a cabin but I’d like to take our caravan there and other places along the way. In the caravan park office I gathered together several free brochures on highlights of the area, including three on birding in the region. It has a very rich and interesting range of birds present.
One of the places mentioned on one pamphlet was the wetland area just off the main highway on the southern approach to the town. On our way out we spent about 20 minutes here but the bird life was not very forthcoming. It was very cold, overcast, threatening to rain and windy. The light was also very poor so I didn’t manage much in the way of bird photos. The list of birds was also rather poor:
Australian Raven
Galah
Little Pied Cormorant
Dusky Moorhen
Eurasian Coot
Australasian Grebe (see photo below)
Yellow Rosella
Yellow-rumped Thornbill
Grey Fantail
Australian Magpie
Laughing Kookaburra
Rock Dove
Australasian Grebe, Narrandera wetlands, New South Wales
Black Swans in an unusual place
My wife and I join a friend on a morning walk every weekday. On our way home we pass a small dam about half a kilometre from our home. This dam was constructed on a vacant block of land by our local council several years ago. It stores storm water from the nearby streets. Some areas near here have a flood mitigation problem only discovered about five years ago during an extremely heavy downpour one afternoon. The council workers pump water from this dam to use in watering street trees and to dampen road works where necessary.
I’ve kept an eye on this small reservoir ever since it first contained water. Generally all I see is a few Pacific Black Ducks, Straw-necked Ibis and a collection a Masked Lapwings (which have been seen breeding there). Welcome Swallows are also regular visitors, and I am sure the local population of White-winged Choughs use the wet mud on the edge of the water to construction their mud nests. One one occasion I also saw several Black-tailed Native-hens.
A few mornings ago I was surprised to see several Black Swans gracing the water. This species is not all that common around here, though I have seen several recently at the nearby Rocky Gully Wetlands, about three kilometres to the east.
One day I will get around to making a list of all the species I’ve seen in this dam.
And then I will need to find a way of encouraging the swans to fly over our land so I can count them on my garden list.
Black Swan with cygnets, Canberra