It’s still a world of dryness and dust out here, so I decided to head for Fivebough Wetlands in Leeton, on the basis that there’s generally some water there, and therefore the place might be a bit livelier than certain other localities.
Location: Fivebough & Tuckerbil Wetlands
August 2018 Field Visit – Assorted Locations
My apologies. August’s Field Visit report is both late and short.
August rather got away from me, but when a friend of mine said she’d seen both a water rat and some echidnas along the Bundidgerry walking track beside Narrandera’s Lake Talbot I decided to go try my luck. My friend took me to where she’d seen them, but unsurprisingly they weren’t hanging out in the same places when we got there, so no water rat or echidnas for me.
May 2017 Field Visit – Fivebough Swamp
I wasn’t going to do another wetland for a few months, because I feel like I do wetlands a lot, but a friend of mine told me that Fivebough Swamp was spectacular at the moment, so I decided that was too good to pass up, and off to Leeton I went. As coincidence would have it, I ran into the same friend and her sister while I was there, and we spent a while wandering along together before parting ways.
October 2016 Field Visit – Fivebough Swamp in flood
I must confess to a spot of laziness this month. With plenty of time available, and much sunnier weather than we’ve had in months, I had many opportunities to head out for a field visit during October, but I left off doing so until the final weekend (I did get a lot of washing and some yard work done, though, so I’m counting it as a productive month from a non-blogging perspective).
My tardiness was then capped off by a spot of not thinking things through properly, and I decided to head to Leeton’s Fivebough Swamp for this month’s trip. I managed to forget the part where this has been a high-rainfall year, and although Fivebough is now actively managed, it has for millennia been a drainage depression below a line of hills – aka a place that catches water in high-rainfall years (I don’t know, I was distracted, the brain cells just did not connect).
I have previously blogged about visits to Fivebough in January this year and last, so you might like to compare with the photos from those visits.
Currently, the main entrance to Fivebough looks like this:
January 2016 Field Visit – Fivebough Swamp
Hello everyone, and welcome to 2016.
I started last year with a field visit to Fivebough Swamp in Leeton, and I hadn’t intended to do the same this year, but I was in Leeton and awake at 6:30am the morning after it had rained, so what else could I do but go for a walk at Fivebough?
July’s roadside birds
It’s a week later than I’d hoped to get these up, but here are my roadside birding pics from my aborted attempt at a field trip in July.
Birds on a wire near Coleambally. They flew off before I managed to get a good view of them, and I can’t ID them from this photo, it’s possible they’re introduced Blackbirds (Turdus merula).
Long-billed Corellas (Cacatua tenuirostris) at Darlington Point.
January 2015 Field Visit – Fivebough Swamp
Welcome to the first ‘official’ monthly blog post of Riverina Wildlife. My goal is to post one field trip report per month, interspersed with any incidental sightings or items of interest I’d like to share in between (more information about my posting schedule can be found here). It being the 31st I’m just getting this one in under the wire for January.
On Wednesday I visited Fivebough Swamp, one half of the Ramsar-listed Fivebough & Tuckerbil Wetlands at Leeton. Fivebough and Tuckerbil are two naturally-occurring shallow swamps, located about 10km apart, to the north-east and north-west of Leeton. Fivebough is a permanent, but fluctuating, fresh-brackish wetland, whilst Tuckerbil is a seasonal, shallow, brackish-saline wetland. Tuckerbil is being managed primarily for waterbird conservation, and amongst other things is an important brolga flocking area, and so is not open to the public. Fivebough, on the other hand, is being managed for both conservation and community education and has a permanent walking trail installed in the south-western part of the swamp, complete with interpretive signage, bird hides, viewing mounds and seating; there’s also a covered picnic area near the carpark.
In October 2002 Fivebough and Tuckerbil were jointly recognised as a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. You can find a list of all Ramsar wetlands in Australia here.
As it is World Wetlands Day next Monday (February 2nd – the date on which the Ramsar Convention was originally signed in 1971) I thought Fivebough was a good choice for January’s field trip.
Riverina Wildlife 