After our stroll to & from the ocean beach side of the Younghusband Peninsula, “our” boat headed further south along the Coorong’s north lagoon.
It became progressively more apparent that we were visiting during “boom” time.
Comments closedTag: water birds
Happily, the pictured sign is obeyed by most of the many humans who drive onto Goolwa’s ocean beach, then proceed south…all the way along the Sir Richard Peninsula, to Pullen Spit.
Pullen Spit is the constantly-shifting northern bank of the River Murray’s mouth.
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The (constantly-shifting) mouth of the Murray-Darling river system is also the Coorong’s mouth.
If the Murray is “roaring”, its “fresh” water “flushes” the Coorong – Australia’s longest lagoon; if it is not “roaring”, the combined forces of incoming ocean water and evaporation of the lagoon’s water make the Coorong progressively more saline.
The Coorong’s southern lagoon – a long way south of the Murray – is usually hypersaline.
This post’s photos were both taken from the Coorong’s northern part, looking at the Pullen Spit, and across it to the Southern Ocean.
In effect, the Pullen Spit is the northern bank of the Murray’s mouth.
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Surrounded by many tiny birds (dotterels, I think) is a solitary example of the bird with the biggest bill of them all.
Almost immediately on our entering the northern (Murray mouth);end of the Coorong it was abundantly evident that we were witnessing “boom time”.
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You are looking at part of the largest of five such graveyards in Port Adelaide.
All will be explained in a few episodes’ time.
Suffice for now that these graveyards’ occupants are not human corpses or skeletal remains, and that various living beings – plants, birds, fish, reptiles and mammals – thrive in these graveyards.
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The pictured birds are teals.
These very common dabbling ducks are no less lovely for being “common”.
Probably, this post’s heroines are grey teals, but they just might be chestnut teals, or hybrids.
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Our local lake never disappoints.
That said, bird-wise, the least interesting time is during Perth’s cooler, rainier months.
Then, migratory birds have all flown north – some of them, to far-off places in Eurasia.
Other birds spread out across southwestern WA; with water and food generally-available, they do not need to congregate around “permanent” bodies of water such as Lake Monger.
Still, as today’s & tomorrow’s posts illustrate, at Lake Monger there is always some avian activity to enjoy…
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Most human observers cannot accurately “read” a bird’s face.
So, the “quirkiness” of a particular bird species – or the “quirkiness” of a particular bird’s appearance/demeanour at a particular moment – is usually all about human perception/misperception.
Typically, it has little or no informed connection to the bird’s actual nature/intent/emotional state.
That said, to this human observer at least, the pictured individual looked marvellously quirky at 6.29 pm on 20 February 2023.
Both of us were on the shoreline of India’s longest lake, shortly before darkness fell.
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What is a “quirky moment”?
The answer is largely a matter of the relevant human observer’s/participant’s experience, sensibility, attitude.
One person’s “surprising” or “bizarre” or “amusing” is another’s “to be expected, in this particular context”, “prosaic”, or “unremarkable”
What is happening in the featured image is a case in point.
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A heron (or egret) in hunting mode delivers a fascinating, repeating sequence of events.
For unpredictably short or long periods the heron is a study in concentration and stillness, until that stillness is suddenly shattered by the bird’s speargun-like attack.
The prey – usually a small fish, crustacean, mollusc, amphibian or insect – is swallowed, rapidly.
The sequence then repeats…
For obvious reasons, a photographer cannot “capture” this behaviour from a very close vantage point, directly in front of the heron’s beak/“speargun”.
However, one can sometimes get surprisingly close, “from behind”.
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