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Fun facts about Grebes
Yesterday, this beautiful little Australasian Grebe was pottering about in an inlet of Manly Dam:
This grebe is wearing its breeding plumage, with a large chestnut patch stretching from its eye down its neck, and that odd yellow patch at the base of its beak. Outside the breeding season, the yellow patch turns white and the bird’s neck is a dark grey-brown to match its back.
Fun fact: Grebes eat their own feathers and also feed their feathers to their young. People think the goal is to make it easier to swallow fish bones, by wrapping around the bones and preventing injury to the bird.
Another fun fact: Grebes have big feet with lobed toes, more like those of coots than ducks. I’ve never seen a grebe out of the water, but I do have a picture of a coot’s feet, which are rather adorable: The foot of the Coot.
Common name: Australasian Grebe
Scientific name: Tachybaptus novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 23-25 cm
Date spotted: 25 March 2026 (autumn)
Location: Manly Dam Park, near Sydney, Australia: 33°46’34.8″S 151°14’49.6″E
Black Swan baby is no longer an ugly duckling!
Back in November, I posted some pictures of a lone Black Swan cygnet with its parents. The baby was actually very cute, not an ugly duckling at all, unless you’re a duck, I guess. Since then, I’ve been keeping an eye on the young family and hoping that the little one makes it through its first difficult months. So far, so good.
Here’s the little one in December, just a few weeks after I first saw it:
It’s very small next to its parents, and doesn’t look much like a swan:
Now we’re in early February, three months after I first saw the baby, and what a difference! The little one is nearly the size of its parents and already looks more like a swan than a bundle of fluff:
Black Swans face several dangers: foxes, dogs, getting snagged and injured by fishing line, boats, and pollution. I don’t know how many there were in the brood, but it’s great to see one youngster doing well.
This video from December shows the little one bravely battling the choppy waters of the dam where they live. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the cygnet cheeping continually. The rushing sound is the wind:
Now, in February, the youngster sails majestically around the adult birds. The noisy birds off-camera are Rainbow Lorikeets:
Common name: Black Swan
Scientific name: Cygnus atratus
Approximate length of adult bird: 120 cm
Date spotted: 3 February 2026 (summer)
Approximate location: Sydney’s Northern Beaches, New South Wales, Australia
Lone cygnet for this Black Swan couple
A pair of Black Swans in my neighbourhood has a single cygnet this year. Baby black swans are so cute! An adorable bundle of grey-cream fluff with black beaks, eyes, and legs:
I don’t know how many eggs there were in the brood, nor how many of them hatched. Alas, baby swans are prey to several natural predators, especially hawks and eagles, as well as to introduced animals like dogs, cats, and foxes.
Here’s the baby and one of the adults, in a lovely mellow lighting:
It’s good to see any young swans at all — I didn’t spot any last year. In fact, I watched a pair of swans devotedly tend their nest for eight months without hatching any eggs! It’s possible they were both males, practising their nesting skills together in the absence of any females. I wrote about their vigil in two posts: part 1 and part 2.
So it’s great to see these two adults looking after the little one:
Common name: Black Swan
Scientific name: Cygnus atratus
Approximate length of adult bird: 120 cm
Date spotted: 25 November 2025 (spring)
Approximate location: Sydney’s Northern Beaches, New South Wales, Australia
Sooty Oystercatcher
Every now and then, I spot an Oystercatcher on one of the rocky plates on our sea shores. They’re usually hard to photograph, being such a sooty black and usually keeping far away from humans. This weekend, two of them broke the pattern.
I was in Wollongong, on the east coast of Australia just south of Sydney. Two Sooty Oystercatchers were pottering around on the rocky plate right next to the beach, prying food out of the crevices. This video shows only one of the birds:
They have long thin beaks, a striking orange in colour. Their eyes are ringed in a matching orange, and their legs are pinky-orange too, turning to yellow around the toes.
These birds are listed as uncommon, and scarce on disturbed beach areas. It’s good to see them just doing what Oystercatchers do.
Common name: Sooty Oystercatcher
Scientific name: Haematopus fuliginosis
Length: 40-52 cm
Date spotted: 9-10 August 2025 (winter)
Location: Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia: 34°25’04.4″S 150°54’08.8″E
White-faced Heron stretching
In the morning sun, a White-faced Heron stretches his wing. The decaying wood of his perch mirrors the pattern of his stretch.
Common name: White-faced Heron
Scientific name: Ardea novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 66-69 cm
Date spotted: 20 June 2025 (winter)
Location: Manly Dam, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’34.0″S 151°14’48.5″E
Muscovy ducks meet a Brush-turkey
Two Muscovy ducks hiss and wag their tails to warn off an Australian Brush-turkey. The Brush-turkey had been investigating my shoes, then it decided to see what the two interesting ducks were up to. The encounter ends peacefully. No feathers flying this time!
Muscovy ducks come from the Americas, and are actually more like a cross between a goose and a duck than just a duck. They hiss like geese, although it’s a very quiet hiss. Their faces and heads look like geese, but their body shape is more like a duck’s.
I’ve seen this pair of Muscovies at Manly Dam often — they’ve made this area their home.
Common name: Australian Brush-turkey and Muscovy duck
Scientific name: Alectura lathami (Brush-turkey) and Cairina moschata (Muscovy)
Approximate length: 60-70 cm (Brush-turkey) and 76–84 cm (Muscovy)
Date spotted: 29 April 2025 (autumn)
Location: Manly Dam park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’44.9″S 151°14’58.4″E
Osprey nests at Rat Park
For a couple of years, I’ve been reading about the Ospreys that nest high on the lights at Rat Park in Warriewood, in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. The birds have earned their fame by returning year after year to the same spot. They build their nests and raise their young in what seems an unlikely and uncomfortable perch, twenty metres above the playing fields. So I went to take a look at them.
Ospreys are magnificent birds, with their large size and impressive fishing skills. They’re listed as vulnerable in NSW. Their numbers were in decline until the 1970s, but the great news is that they’re on the rise now.
Here’s a close-up of the same Osprey on the lamp post:
This photo shows the same nest from the other side:
Zooming out to show the playing field and the 20-metre lamp post with the nest on top:
There were nests on top of a couple of the other lamp posts too, but no Ospreys tending them while I was there.
Here’s a front view of the Osprey with the sun behind it:
I’ve been lucky enough to see Ospreys a few times, most often at the Long Reef Aquatic Reserve in Collaroy. The Manly Observer has reported on the Ospreys of Rat Park, and they’ve featured on several other sites including Facebook.
Common name: Eastern Osprey
Scientific name: Pandion cristatus
Approximate length: 57 cm
Date spotted: 4 April 2025 (autumn)
Location: Rat Park, Warriewood, New South Wales, Australia: 33°41’50.6″S 151°18’21.8″E
Longest nest-sitting ever: Black Swans abandon nest after 8 months (part 2 of story)
Over the past 8 months, two Black Swans have been diligently tending a nest in Manly Dam Park, in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. In the early days (August 2024), spring was in the air. Nature was blooming and the swans were devoted and diligent. As spring turned to summer, the heat bore down. Cicadas shrieked, reeds grew up and died down again. Still, the pair tended the nest, rebuilding regularly, looking after each other, and clearing the water around their nest. (Story of two nesting Black Swans: Part 1)
Yesterday (9 April 2025), for the first time, the nest was empty when I walked past. The nest is the large circle of brown reeds lying horizontal behind the green reeds:
A hundred metres away, one of the swans was drifting on the water, hooting quietly and persistently:
Once or twice I heard the other swan replying from deep in the reeds, but I didn’t see it.
At my previous visit a week ago, the swans had moved their nest to a slightly different location, just ten metres or so away from the original location. I wondered if this meant that at last, there was hope for an egg or two. Who knows, perhaps the pair will proudly emerge with a train of cygnets to show. Alas, though, I doubt that there were ever any eggs in the nest. From a discussion on Reddit, it seems that the most likely explanation is that the swans are two males, practising nest-building and nest-sitting in the absence of a female to lay an egg.
Here’s a photo from October 2024, showing both swans at the nest:
Here’s one of the swans in early February 2025, off shift for a moment while its partner sits on the nest:
This is the tranquil site of the nest, now empty, but ready perhaps for a new attempt come spring:
Common name: Black Swan
Scientific name: Cygnus atratus
Approximate length: 120 cm
Date spotted: 23 August through to 9 April 2025 (late winter, through spring and summer, into autumn)
Approximate location: Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia
Lost! Baby Purple Swamphen
A baby Purple Swamphen hops around the lily pads, sticking close to the safety of her mother. But where is her little brother?
I love the baby birds’ tiny little wings. They look like little arms flapping about. At first, I thought that the baby had caught a frog. No, it’s just those little wing stubs.
But where is her brother? Another tiny little Purple Swamphen is lost amongst the reeds! It’s hard to see how such a tiny thing can find his way back to his mother and sister, so far away among the giant lily pads:
I don’t know whether these birds are male or female, so I’ve just picked pronouns at random. Both sexes of Purple Swamphens look after their young, and they’re hard to tell apart.
Mother might not have the most beautiful face, but she offers safety and comfort:
Will the little one find his way back? His sister gazes across the lily pads, as if searching for him:
At last, the wanderer spots his family and hurries across the lily pads. His sister greets him warmly, while mother looks on fondly:
Common name: Purple Swamphen
Scientific name: Porphyrio porphyrio
Approximate length of adult: 50 cm
Date spotted: 5 February 2025 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’35.4″S 151°14’49.1″E
A beautiful orange cormorant
Usually, Little Pied Cormorants have bright white and shiny black feathers. This one, though, has a lovely burnished orange head and chest. This is probably due to staining from natural iron deposits in the water.
Here’s a short video, showing the back of the bird’s head with a neat black stripe between the orange feathers of the bird’s face:
Common name: Little Pied Cormorant
Scientific name: Phalacrocorax melanoleucos
Approximate length: 60 cm
Date spotted: 20 January 2025 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam, Allambie Heights, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’35.1″S 151°14’48.5″E
Sydney Birder 