Frances spent the day exploring artistic bits of Adelaide and my objective was birding around St Kilda (SA version, not Moorabbin Oval or the Espy).
We parted company after a visit to the Central Market and I took advice from Polly about the best route to St Kilda. This started with a leg along Glover Avenue through the West Parklands to South Road. That soon became the M2 (memories of driving the UK M2 to University) and speed up to 80 kph. For some reason at one point the limit dropped to 40 kph - wtf? no congestion/accident/ roadworks - and then when it got to Grand Junction Road up to 110 kph all the way to St Kilda Rd. Woo Hoo: this probably reduced the time for the trip by 20 minutes or more!
My target birds for the visit were Banded Stilt, Red-necked Avocet and White-winged Fairywren (WWF). The first two were absent - probably gone to the salt lakes up North. The third was tricky as I found some wrens (at point 1 in the image below) which were very plain coloured and responded to WWF calls. However they were females or immature males rather than the obvious breeding males so rather tricky to ID. I have decided that I am OK to use the species for BirdADay! No photo however.
Here is an image of one of the flocks of Pied Stilt out on the mud flats at point 2.
Also nearby on the flats was a mixed flock of Royal Spoonbills (62), Australian White Ibis (10 here, another 72 elsewhere in the area) and Little Egrets (16). A snap of part of the flock.
I wandered around a bit ....
.. seeing a heap of waders in the far distance (tide was out dammit) but a flock of about 80 birds came into the marsh near point 1. Here are some of them. I thought ~70 Red-necked Stints and 10 Red-capped Plovers. Due to them being right into the sun, reflection off the water/mud and about 100 m away the image is pretty much "copyright CBP". (For non-birders CBP is the approved acronym for a Facebook Group "Crap Bird Photography" which people refer to for sub-par images, even if not loaded to the Group.)
I then went to the Mangrove Boardwalk, having got an access card (no cost) at the ramp kiosk. Here is the route of the walk near point 3 in the previous map.
The start goes through this edifice.
For reasons not clear to me the adult mangroves near the start are not happy!
However as indicated by the arrows there are some new trees growing.
Further out the trees seemed in good shape.
As usual there were no birds seen in the mangroves! On getting to the lookout there was a good view across Barker Inlet to Torrens Island.
There were a lotta swans on these flats. My guess was at least 500. Also 15 White-faced Herons.
On the drive out I had been impressed by the coloured barriers beside the road. So I decided to try switching from Polly-view to camera on the move. It worked OK in terms of safety and getting an image, bu the pretty barriers weren't on my side of the road.
Polly did redirect me from South Road to Grange Rd to avoid congestion which was probably a Good Thing. I saw this poster in Glenelg which I rather liked..
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