One of the most well known birding sights in Australia is the Western Water Treatment Plant in Werribee, just to the west of Melbourne. This plant is very old and was built before modern day sewage treatment techniques. When it was built, the basic technique was to let the water filter into the ground and let nature take care of itself. This meant that for a plant to manage the amount of water for a city the size of Melbourne, it had to be very large and in fact, the Werribee treatment plant is enormous and consists of numerous wetlands of varying depths depending on how the water is managed. Fortunately, today the treatment techniques are much more advanced so a large part of the wetlands are no longer actively used for water treatment, but they still are great bird habitat.
In order to enter the plant, out of town visitors but be accompanied by a local birder with a key and permit. I had several offers and ended up spending the day with Dave Torr who was kind enough to show me through the plant. Throughout the day we saw a ton of birds, my highest daily total so far this year. Most of the birds I had seen before, but I did add several new birds to my Australia list and a couple to my lifelist. All in all it was quite a great day and a wonderful experience.
My only disappointment was that I didn't get to see a Freckled Duck in the plant. Afterwards, Dave gave me a few tips on where he often sees them locally. I had planned to go tomorrow morning but didn't have anything else to do this evening so I took off to see if I could find one. Dave's directions were great and Iended up finding a flock of over 20 ducks. I couldn't get as close to them as I would have liked but I did manage the above photo. While it isn't anything special, it is a start. Hopefully I can get something better in the next few months.
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