14th April - Rottnest Island
Rottnest Island is just off the coast from Perth. It is accessible by regular tourist ferry from Perth via the Swan River or from the coast at Fremantle. We drove the 17km to Fremantle for the shorter crossing. Rough sea conditions shortened our time on the island. We had booked the 7am departure and 6pm return; but today they were only operating a 9am departure and a 4pm return.
We managed reasonable views of Flesh-footed Shearwater on both crossings - but no other seabirds. On the island we soon became acquainted with our first marsupial of the trip - the Quokka, which seemed very accustomed to the presence of tourists around the settlement on the island. We ventured inland first to view the variously sized saline lagoons. Reports I had seen suggested that these abounded with waterbirds. We then followed the coast back to the settlement ~ 5hours walking at birding pace. From the scenic perspective we had a good walk around and enjoyed views of pink lakes and beautiful coast. But the birds were disappointing. We did find some fairly large flocks of Red-necked Stint and a few Red-capped Plover but all of our target species were missing and some lakes were totally devoid of birds. |