Nature notes

The final journey

1/5/2026

Short-finned eels swim more than 3000kms against the current to reach the Coral Sea.
Photo: Arthur Rylah Institute

By Catherine Watson

SHORT-tailed shearwaters are not the only local animals setting off on an epic journey. Short-finned eels are also embarking on a long and arduous trek to the seas north of Australia.

While most of the shearwaters will make it back to Phillip Island next spring, the eels are making their final journey.

Short-finned eels are common, though rarely noticed, in estuarine rivers and creeks across mainland Bass Coast. They usually begin their migration unnoticed in mid-to-late autumn, but when estuaries are closed you can sometimes see them gathering at river mouths, waiting for a high tide to carry them across the bar.

8 Comments

Autumn nature notes

3/4/2026

1 Comment

The Eastern Curlews are preparing for their epic migration to the Northern Hemisphere.
Photo: Dave Newman

By Lisa Gilbert, Phillip Island Nature Parks

AS AUTUMN settles in, on Phillip Island (Milawul) the busy shorebird breeding season begins to wind down. While some devoted parents are still tending eggs or guiding their fast-growing chicks, many birds are already starting to gather into winter flocks. Before long, these fledglings along with their parents will begin moving off the island in search of new feeding grounds.

1 Comment

The world in miniature

2/4/2026

3 Comments

Dick Wettenhall’s monumental study of orchids in the Gurdies uncovers a complex web of life.
Photos: Warren Reed, Coast magazine

By Catherine Watson

AT FIRST it was the birds that attracted Dick Wettenhall to The Gurdies reserve, opposite his winery. Over time his gaze shifted to the orchids for which the reserve is known among Australian native orchid lovers.

A former professor of biochemistry at Melbourne University, he became increasingly fascinated by the complex functions, adaptations and associated biodiversification of orchid ecosystems in a single nature reserve.

In 2024, he published The Guide to Orchid Paradise: The Gurdies Nature Conservation Reserve. At 270 pages, it was a substantial work, but that was just for starters. Dick calls it "a guidebook".

3 Comments

My hoodie season

18/3/2026

5 Comments

There is always a special story for the volunteers. LB is part of Paula Street’s.

By Paula Street

THE hoodie season starts in August with an annual preseason debrief and update with all the volunteers and associated organisations. It’s always a buzz to catch up with the tribe.

Then out we go checking all our breeding sites with great enthusiasm, looking for which hoodies are pairing up this season. Usually the same pair claim the same territory each year, but sometimes there are new pairs when old ones simply don’t return.

By September we are looking for nesting behaviour and the first eggs, always a bit of excitement. Eggs are so well camouflaged and just sit in a “scrape” in the sand – easy to miss and takes a bit of training to know how to find them.

5 Comments

Welcome, stranger

16/2/2026

0 Comments

Spotted on Reef Island, the Eastern Yellow Wagtail is a long way from home. Photos: Dave Newman

By Dave Newman

RECENTLY birder Abby Hayes spotted a bird on Reef Island that she was unable to identify. It turns out it was an Eastern Yellow Wagtail, a very rare bird for Victoria.

Eastern Yellow Wagtails are a species that breed from Europe to Siberia, as well as Alaska. They are quite small being around 17cm long. They migrate through Asia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and a few individuals end up in northern parts of Australia and are reasonably regular to places like Broome and Darwin.

0 Comments

Return of the wild

13/12/2025

6 Comments

The trees – and animals – are returning to a windswept patch
near Wonthaggi that was grazed for decades. Photo: Geoff Glare

By Catherine Watson

IN THE space of a month, three different people told me about the miracle unfolding on a windswept patch called West Area. “You should see what the Friends are doing out there,” they said.

They meant the Friends of the Wonthaggi Heathlands and Coastal Reserve, of course, so one recent morning I joined long-time president Geoff Glare and secretary Anne Looney to see the miracle for myself.

I soon understood why this is such a challenging site. A hot northerly wind tore at our hats and snatched away our words. If it's not the hot northerlies, it's the icy south-westerlies straight off Antarctica. Most years we experience the beastly easterlies; this spring it was those relentless westerlies.

6 Comments

Just mucking around

9/12/2025

4 Comments

By Catherine Watson

STEP into Barbara McNulty’s garden and you feel as though you’ve entered a miniature botanical garden. There are frog ponds and potted jungles, a chook palace, tiled garden beds and shady tunnels framed by a massive banksia.

It's only a quarter of an acre but appears much bigger because there is always more to see, around every corner: salvaged garden fountain pieces, bromeliads thriving in the shelter of a roofless shed crushed years ago by a falling tree. A damaged clawfoot bath she pulled out of her previous house has found new service as a pond. A chipped terracotta fish she carried home from Vietnam many years ago made a perfect spout.

It seems that everything in Barbara's world gets reimagined. “I collect all sorts of bits and pieces," she says. "One day I find a use for them.”

4 Comments

Eye to eye

5/12/2025

6 Comments

Black-shouldered Kites in courtship routine, Woodleigh. Photos: Andrew Keir

By Catherine Watson

IF YOU live in Bass Coast you’re probably sharing the neighbourhood with a few photogenic locals: black-shouldered kites, wedgies, fairy-wrens, kestrels. But you probably haven’t seen them the way Andrew Keir sees them. His birds look straight down the barrel of the lens as if they’re letting him into their world.

Andrew, a quietly obsessive bird photographer, scored a “highly commended” in a recent Phillip Island Camera Club exhibition with a portfolio of five photos of the local raptors.

His images capture some exquisite moments: two kites circling through an elegant courtship routine, a kestrel pausing on a post, a black-shouldered kite in the backyard.

6 Comments

Penguin secrets of success

10/11/2025

0 Comments

New season chicks, two-three weeks old. Just like humans, penguin chicks that get a good start in life tend to prosper in later life. Photos: Phillip Island Nature Parks

By Lisa Gilbert

A NEW study based entirely on penguins at the Penguin Parade over the past 26 years, has for the first time, provided valuable insights into the way little penguins grow in different conditions and environments.

It comes as the first penguin chicks of the breeding season are hatching on Phillip Island.

Researchers followed more than 2200 penguins from the 37,000 strong Summerland Peninsula colony, from hatching to the end of their lives, using unique long-term monitoring to study their ecology and how early-life growth influences individual life-history outcomes.

The study, in collaboration with French scientists, was published in the Journal of Animal Ecology and found that early developmental trajectories are strong predictors of individual reproductive success and survival in the wild.

0 Comments

Two parts science, one part magic

8/11/2025

9 Comments

By Catherine Watson

A couple of years ago, when I learned that my new neighbour Miriam Ford was Victorian president of the Australian Plant Society, I was intrigued. The house was an unremarkable brick veneer but the block was treeless. The previous owner liked it that way. He used to practise his golf on the lawn – no trees, no shrubs, not even a flower bed, to interrupt his chip shots.

Clearly Miriam had plans. But she was recently separated, juggling the APS presidency and organising its national biennial conference, so the transformation began slowly. For the first year, the only sign was the pots of plants that began to appear along the fence line, then dozens more, down the driveway.

9 Comments

<<Previous