I've been visiting Martin Mere Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust for over 40 years, since just before it opened in fact, in 1974. One of the highlights of my visits has always been a walk around the collection to see the strange Cape Barren Geese. With a comical appearance due in part to a blob of green "putty", as my Dad used to call it, on top of the bill, they are an aggressive goose, running headlong at anybody who comes close to their pen, and they are a bird which I never thought that I would see in the wild. Until that is, Josh sent me a photo of one recently which he had seen in a National Park near Port Lincoln in Southern Australia. Finally today I visited the area with him and we came across a flock of 47 birds near Sleaford Mere on the edge of Lincoln National Park, and later we saw two birds on the rocks near Donnington Island.
Well that's a first for me, I'd never seen Cape Barren geese fly before!
As we were driving through the park, this male emu ran across the road, followed shortly afterwards by a female.
Hooded plover on the Sleaford Mere salt lake.
This bird might be in juvenile plumage, but no doubting the ID given that awesome bill. Pacific gull.
Black-faced cormorants.
Sooty oystercatcher.
Southern scrub-robin
Australian sea-lions phone-scoped on nearby Donnington Island. There were also at least 800 crested terns on the island, as well as hundreds of silver gulls and a few Pacific gulls and pied cormorants.
Sleaford Mere
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