The sad thing about winter is that some weekends, the weather is so wet that you can't get out and about.  So, why not bring the birds to us instead?

Take note of my husband's ingenuity.  We now have our bird feeder ready to go (yes, it is a pot lid, but in our defence, when we moved houses, we couldn't find the pot it belonged to so we're recycling).  In there is simply some sunflower seeds and a mix of supermarket bought bird seed.

This week we have a Turtle Dove and some great photos of some Crimson Rosellas and a cheeky Eastern Rosella.

Today wasn't so much about bird watching, it was more just to get out on a lovely day to go for a walk and a drive in our extended backyard.

In the 4wd we got to drive around.  We drove through O'briens Crossing and basically went around most of the state park until we stopped at McKenzie Flats to go for a walk.  I just thought I'd share this photo - how many fire tails can you count?

We saw you're standard Blue Wrens, Willie Wag Tails, Crimson Rosellas, a few Welcome Swallows and I managed to score my first photo of a White Eared Honeyeater (so I've added it to the collection).  Now it's becoming more of a challenge to get photos for birds that I don't have.  So, if anyone out there knows where I can find the Australasian Bittern, Great Crested Grebe or a Dollar Bird - these are teh ones I'll be looking for in the near future.

Happy hunting.

So, usually I id my birds by looking at the photos once I've taken them with my sports lens.  I'm not a huge fan of binoculars as I've usually got the camera anyway and it's too awkward to handle both... but that brings me to a spotting scope.

With a spotting scope, one can set up in a bird hide or on the banks of lake Borrie (for example) and take their time to id the birds sitting out there on the water. 

As much as I'd love to be able to do this with a camera, the $2,000 odd dollars it would cost to upgrade my lens is a little out of my budget (any camera stores out there who would like to sponsor a bird blogger, give me a call!), so this brings me back to the scope.

Have had a look online, and the best ones at the most reasonable prices seem to come from the US - but they won't ship here.  What's the go with that?  Anyway, have found the Meade spotting scope on ebay (Australian Ebay).  I just thought I'd pose the question - what do you use to find and id your birds?  Any recommendations?

Got some new species (well at least for us) this time round to the treatment plant.  The Musk Duck was a score for me as well as some great photos of the Australasian Darter.  If you look very closely at the rock, there's some freckled ducks in there. Pictured we also have an Egret, Brown Falcon and a White-Necked Heron.

The Pink-Eared Duck was plentiful (had also never seen them before either).  We caught a Cape Barren Goose sneaking in between some of the ponds but unfortuantly, we didn't see the Oranged Belied Parot or the Great Crested Greeb... we're also on the look out for the Australasian Bittern... Maybe next time.

On the weekend we found ourselves heading up to Wangaratta so we thought we'd take the time to have a crack at finding the Regent Honeyeater.  The best way for me to describe it is it looks almost similar to a New Holland Honeyeater, but it's darker, more black around the head and all over.  It's endangered.

Anyway, despite the weatherman's assurances for a cold but sunny day, the weather was miserable!  It alternated between fog, misty rain and... well, that's about it.  We went to the National Park anyway to see what we could find.  Two new birds we can add to our list include the Yellow-Tufted Honeyeater and the White-Naped Honeyeater (photos / descriptions in Robins and other small birds).  Other birds that we saw included Fantails, Golden Whistlers and Willy Wag Tails... with the rain I'm afraid we didn't stick around for much longer than that.

In addition to that, for the first time I spotted a wild deer.  The young Samba buck was just standing there watching us go by... it was then my husband pointed out the doe.  You wouldn't think such large animals would blend in so well, but there you go.  I wouldn't have seen the doe if Rob hadn't let me know it was there.

Good weekend in all.  Hopefully when the gumtrees are mid-flower we'll go back to try again for the Regent.