We haven't been to the Western Treatment Plant f(WTP) or a while, mainly due to traffic concerns as work continues on the "improvements" to the M1 west of the Westgate Bridge. It is finally beginning to look as though the end is near although the continually changing speed limits were a pain in the bum. The drive wasn't too bad however.
On getting to the WTP a first issue was that my key didn't seem to work on the Paradise Rd gate. So we went to the T section ponds first. Where the key worked fine! Getting the big picture out of the way first we ended with 55 species and a useless "shorebird sp" over 3 checklists. A summary is in this eBird trip report https://ebird.org/tripreport/332603.
The most obvious sighting there was a flock of Australian Shelduck which I estimated as about 1000 birds. This image includes about 1/3rd of the flock.
Later, having got the key to work at Paradise Rd we found another big flock gathered in a dense mob, but also across the pond. I think I allowed this one to be a bit smaller - perhaps 800 birds.
But really the birds were everywhere: on nearly every pond; in paddocks and on the shoreline. In total I wrote down 2470 birds, but I would regard that as a very conservative estimate. I cannot imagine what has caused this number of birds to be here at this time of year as they are usually - in NSW at least - up in the high country in Summer (thus the alternative name Mountain Duck).
Getting back to sightings at the T section, it is always good to add Cape Barren Geese to a list. In total this flock was 12 birds.
I looked closely at this small flock of waders but couldn't pick out any rarities: all these seemed to be Sharp-tailed Sandpipers.
A solitary Red-necked Avocet was also nice, and there were many Pied Stilts around.
There were 12 Yellow-billed Spoonbills in this area (and 2 Royal Spoonbills). This one seemed to find a need for a little grooming.
At the Little River Hide there were a lot of shorebirds around with the low tide meaning a lot of them (guessed at 500 birds) too far away foe me to identify to species.
As we finished off we relocated a flock of Straw-necked Ibis seen flying over this area when we first got to the WTP. I think this again shows about 1/3rd of the flock and I have counted 65 Ibis in the image so estimate 200 birds in total.
The surprising MIA were Brolgas of which we saw none. My guess is they had found some nearby agricultural activity, providing easy feeding, somewhere that we didn't go. I also didn't write down any parrots or cockatoos (and don't remember seeing ones I forgot to note).
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