Pine Creek: sewage ponds and Miners Park
With Hooded Parrots and Ghost Bats both successfully seen yesterday, this morning I walked to the town’s sewage ponds which are the recommended local site for trying to see Gouldian Finches. “Trying to” are the relevant words there. They are seen regularly in the area but it seems not reliably. I didn’t meet anyone who had. In fact the birders I saw all specifically mentioned they hadn’t found any.
Pine Creek sits beside the highway but is accessed by a half-circle road which comes off the highway, runs through the middle of the town, and back onto the highway. The road to the sewage ponds is east of the town, about halfway between either end of the semi-circle road, so to get there you walk out to the highway and then double-back up to the sewage ponds road (which is just marked with a sign for the cemetery).
I had seen on Google Maps that there were various little dirt tracks directly east of town but I didn’t want to waste time trying to find if they reached the highway or not, so I took the “long” way as described above. Coming back I scouted around a bit, and found that there is a track starting at the end of the Water Gardens which comes out directly opposite the sewage ponds road.
It was a good thing I took the longer way though, because firstly I saw a covey of Brown Quail by the side of the road at the junction with the highway, but much more importantly – an Australian Bustard! I had seen on eBird that they are sometimes seen here but didn’t think I’d be lucky enough for that. It was in flight, fortunately flying across the view rather than away from me, so I got a good look at it. Flight views are not as good as standing views of course, but better than nothing. A comparison which many might be more familiar with would be that if you see a bittern in flight it is awesome because they are difficult to see, but you’d still prefer to see it on the ground.
It’s about 3km to the ponds along a red sand road. The only things down there are the ponds and, just past them, the cemetery. If you’re walking and a vehicle comes along it’s best to move well off the road to avoid being covered in red dust!
On the way I came across two fine-looking horses which at first I thought must be wild brumbies. They certainly acted wild, snorting and stomping as they ran off through the trees, but the next morning they were still around and from their prints in the sand I think they were shod.
Pine Creek is only a tiny town so their sewage plant is just two small ponds filled with water, and a third which was either being constructed or relined. A sign on the gate said booking was required but the gates were open, there were workers inside, and so I just went in and they didn’t mind. However the ponds are so small that viewing from outside the fence is easy enough, with the best view being from the left side (if walking around the perimeter from the gate).
To the right side of the ponds is a grassed area with sprinklers of waste-water creating circular puddles. I checked all these for finches but the only birds on the grass were numerous Spur-winged Plovers and a lone Plumed Egret.
On the ponds themselves were several Australian Little Grebes, a Grey Teal, and - around the concrete edges – a Pied Stilt and lots of Black-fronted Dotterels. When I circled the fence-line later from the outside I saw a Wandering Whistling Duck squatting in a hollow which, when it walked over to the water, appeared to have a lame wing. But it was gone the next morning so I guess it was fine.
Much better than all of these were the Radjah Shelducks, which were a lifer for me. There were a lot of them as well. A large brood of half-grown birds swimming in the water, and multiple adult pairs dotted about on the grass.
These were just as big an attraction here for me as the Gouldian Finches would be, although I knew I would almost certainly see them later in the trip which wouldn’t be the case for the Gouldians.
As for the Gouldians, not a sign.
I tried the cemetery as well where I only saw a Blue-winged Kookaburra and a Great Bowerbird. Then I did another circuit of the ponds and headed back to town. On the walk back, just by the Water Gardens, I got another lifer with a Paperbark Flycatcher which is found only in northern Australia.
Paperbark Flycatcher. I think The Beatles wrote a song about this one.
Earlier in the morning when crossing through the Water Gardens on my way to the ponds, I had met another birder who was looking for Gouldians, but was photographing the Masked Finches I had stopped to watch (another lifer for me), and he told me about what he called “the old settling pond” by Miners Park a few minutes walk away where he had seen Crimson Finches the evening before. So that’s where I went now.
Pine Creek was a huge name in gold-mining back in the day with thousands of eager prospectors making their way here in search of fortune. Many of them came by foot over hundreds of miles of desert because there were no roads and it was years before the railway made it out this far. Now the old railway station is a museum piece and Miners Park next to it displays all sorts of old equipment which was in use here.
Walking through Miners Park you will find a small creek channel on the other side, still with water trapped within it on my visit, and then if you cross the bright yellow footbridge and turn directly right to follow the dirt track under the old rail-bridge you will find a fairly big circular pond. There was an Australian Darter perched on a dead snag at the edge of the water and, in a somewhat bizarre turn, this was the first one I had seen on the trip: not anywhere around the coast or on some big river, but in the middle of the desert.
This pond was a great little spot. Unlike the sewage ponds which were just bare concrete with nothing around them, this one was fringed with reeds and pandanus. And in those reeds and pandanus were Crimson Finches! An immediate success.
There were birds of all kinds in this area. An Olive-backed Oriole was obliging in having its photo taken (unlike the Crimson Finches who had proved very difficult to get acceptable shots of – the photos above were taken the following day), there were Golden-headed Cisticolas in the reeds with the finches, and all sorts of honeyeaters in the trees including at least one pair of Bar-breasted Honeyeaters which were yet another lifer (the sixth for the day).
Olive-backed Oriole...
...and for good measure, a Green Oriole too. They are also called Yellow Orioles which is a better name.
Bar-breasted Honeyeater
It was really really hot today, so having spent quite a bit of time around the Miners Park pond I headed back to my room to wait out the worst of the heat. In the late afternoon I returned to the Water Gardens where I finally succeeded in seeing and photographing a male Hooded Parrot. Just a spectacular bird!
In the evening the parrots were perched all along the power lines as they gathered before going to roost.
While at the Water Gardens I met a lady birdwatcher who said that the caravan park at Wyndham in the very top north-east of Western Australia was fully reliable for Gouldians, which come to a water tap behind the park. Now I just need to try and figure out if I can get there! (Although, in Broome I met birders twice who had come through Wyndham and not seen Gouldians).
Yesterday I had seen 38 species of birds. Today was an even fifty. The only mammal I’m counting are the Black Flying Foxes (and not the horses):
Australian Little Grebe, Little Pied Cormorant, Australian Darter, Radjah Shelduck, Wandering Whistling Duck, Grey Teal, White-bellied Sea Eagle, Black Kite, Great Egret, Plumed Egret, Straw-necked Ibis, Black-fronted Dotterel, Spur-winged Plover, Pied Stilt, Australian Brown Quail, Australian Bustard, Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Little Corella, Red-collared Lorikeet, Red-winged Parrot, Hooded Parrot, Bar-shouldered Dove, Peaceful Dove, Blue-winged Kookaburra, Rainbow Bee-eater, White-breasted Woodswallow, White-bellied Cuckoo-Shrike, Black-faced Cuckoo-Shrike, Golden-headed Cisticola, Rufous Whistler, Grey-crowned Babbler, Paperbark Flycatcher, Willy Wagtail, Magpie-Lark, Mistletoebird, Blue-faced Honeyeater, White-gaped Honeyeater, Bar-breasted Honeyeater, White-throated Honeyeater, Dusky Myzomela, Silver-crowned Friarbird, Little Friarbird, Masked Finch, Crimson Finch, Australian Figbird, Olive-backed Oriole, Green Oriole, Great Bowerbird, Pied Butcherbird, Torresian Crow.
With Hooded Parrots and Ghost Bats both successfully seen yesterday, this morning I walked to the town’s sewage ponds which are the recommended local site for trying to see Gouldian Finches. “Trying to” are the relevant words there. They are seen regularly in the area but it seems not reliably. I didn’t meet anyone who had. In fact the birders I saw all specifically mentioned they hadn’t found any.
Pine Creek sits beside the highway but is accessed by a half-circle road which comes off the highway, runs through the middle of the town, and back onto the highway. The road to the sewage ponds is east of the town, about halfway between either end of the semi-circle road, so to get there you walk out to the highway and then double-back up to the sewage ponds road (which is just marked with a sign for the cemetery).
I had seen on Google Maps that there were various little dirt tracks directly east of town but I didn’t want to waste time trying to find if they reached the highway or not, so I took the “long” way as described above. Coming back I scouted around a bit, and found that there is a track starting at the end of the Water Gardens which comes out directly opposite the sewage ponds road.
It was a good thing I took the longer way though, because firstly I saw a covey of Brown Quail by the side of the road at the junction with the highway, but much more importantly – an Australian Bustard! I had seen on eBird that they are sometimes seen here but didn’t think I’d be lucky enough for that. It was in flight, fortunately flying across the view rather than away from me, so I got a good look at it. Flight views are not as good as standing views of course, but better than nothing. A comparison which many might be more familiar with would be that if you see a bittern in flight it is awesome because they are difficult to see, but you’d still prefer to see it on the ground.
It’s about 3km to the ponds along a red sand road. The only things down there are the ponds and, just past them, the cemetery. If you’re walking and a vehicle comes along it’s best to move well off the road to avoid being covered in red dust!
On the way I came across two fine-looking horses which at first I thought must be wild brumbies. They certainly acted wild, snorting and stomping as they ran off through the trees, but the next morning they were still around and from their prints in the sand I think they were shod.
Pine Creek is only a tiny town so their sewage plant is just two small ponds filled with water, and a third which was either being constructed or relined. A sign on the gate said booking was required but the gates were open, there were workers inside, and so I just went in and they didn’t mind. However the ponds are so small that viewing from outside the fence is easy enough, with the best view being from the left side (if walking around the perimeter from the gate).
To the right side of the ponds is a grassed area with sprinklers of waste-water creating circular puddles. I checked all these for finches but the only birds on the grass were numerous Spur-winged Plovers and a lone Plumed Egret.
On the ponds themselves were several Australian Little Grebes, a Grey Teal, and - around the concrete edges – a Pied Stilt and lots of Black-fronted Dotterels. When I circled the fence-line later from the outside I saw a Wandering Whistling Duck squatting in a hollow which, when it walked over to the water, appeared to have a lame wing. But it was gone the next morning so I guess it was fine.
Much better than all of these were the Radjah Shelducks, which were a lifer for me. There were a lot of them as well. A large brood of half-grown birds swimming in the water, and multiple adult pairs dotted about on the grass.
These were just as big an attraction here for me as the Gouldian Finches would be, although I knew I would almost certainly see them later in the trip which wouldn’t be the case for the Gouldians.
As for the Gouldians, not a sign.
I tried the cemetery as well where I only saw a Blue-winged Kookaburra and a Great Bowerbird. Then I did another circuit of the ponds and headed back to town. On the walk back, just by the Water Gardens, I got another lifer with a Paperbark Flycatcher which is found only in northern Australia.
Paperbark Flycatcher. I think The Beatles wrote a song about this one.
Earlier in the morning when crossing through the Water Gardens on my way to the ponds, I had met another birder who was looking for Gouldians, but was photographing the Masked Finches I had stopped to watch (another lifer for me), and he told me about what he called “the old settling pond” by Miners Park a few minutes walk away where he had seen Crimson Finches the evening before. So that’s where I went now.
Pine Creek was a huge name in gold-mining back in the day with thousands of eager prospectors making their way here in search of fortune. Many of them came by foot over hundreds of miles of desert because there were no roads and it was years before the railway made it out this far. Now the old railway station is a museum piece and Miners Park next to it displays all sorts of old equipment which was in use here.
Walking through Miners Park you will find a small creek channel on the other side, still with water trapped within it on my visit, and then if you cross the bright yellow footbridge and turn directly right to follow the dirt track under the old rail-bridge you will find a fairly big circular pond. There was an Australian Darter perched on a dead snag at the edge of the water and, in a somewhat bizarre turn, this was the first one I had seen on the trip: not anywhere around the coast or on some big river, but in the middle of the desert.
This pond was a great little spot. Unlike the sewage ponds which were just bare concrete with nothing around them, this one was fringed with reeds and pandanus. And in those reeds and pandanus were Crimson Finches! An immediate success.
There were birds of all kinds in this area. An Olive-backed Oriole was obliging in having its photo taken (unlike the Crimson Finches who had proved very difficult to get acceptable shots of – the photos above were taken the following day), there were Golden-headed Cisticolas in the reeds with the finches, and all sorts of honeyeaters in the trees including at least one pair of Bar-breasted Honeyeaters which were yet another lifer (the sixth for the day).
Olive-backed Oriole...
...and for good measure, a Green Oriole too. They are also called Yellow Orioles which is a better name.
Bar-breasted Honeyeater
It was really really hot today, so having spent quite a bit of time around the Miners Park pond I headed back to my room to wait out the worst of the heat. In the late afternoon I returned to the Water Gardens where I finally succeeded in seeing and photographing a male Hooded Parrot. Just a spectacular bird!
In the evening the parrots were perched all along the power lines as they gathered before going to roost.
While at the Water Gardens I met a lady birdwatcher who said that the caravan park at Wyndham in the very top north-east of Western Australia was fully reliable for Gouldians, which come to a water tap behind the park. Now I just need to try and figure out if I can get there! (Although, in Broome I met birders twice who had come through Wyndham and not seen Gouldians).
Yesterday I had seen 38 species of birds. Today was an even fifty. The only mammal I’m counting are the Black Flying Foxes (and not the horses):
Australian Little Grebe, Little Pied Cormorant, Australian Darter, Radjah Shelduck, Wandering Whistling Duck, Grey Teal, White-bellied Sea Eagle, Black Kite, Great Egret, Plumed Egret, Straw-necked Ibis, Black-fronted Dotterel, Spur-winged Plover, Pied Stilt, Australian Brown Quail, Australian Bustard, Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Little Corella, Red-collared Lorikeet, Red-winged Parrot, Hooded Parrot, Bar-shouldered Dove, Peaceful Dove, Blue-winged Kookaburra, Rainbow Bee-eater, White-breasted Woodswallow, White-bellied Cuckoo-Shrike, Black-faced Cuckoo-Shrike, Golden-headed Cisticola, Rufous Whistler, Grey-crowned Babbler, Paperbark Flycatcher, Willy Wagtail, Magpie-Lark, Mistletoebird, Blue-faced Honeyeater, White-gaped Honeyeater, Bar-breasted Honeyeater, White-throated Honeyeater, Dusky Myzomela, Silver-crowned Friarbird, Little Friarbird, Masked Finch, Crimson Finch, Australian Figbird, Olive-backed Oriole, Green Oriole, Great Bowerbird, Pied Butcherbird, Torresian Crow.
Last edited:
Chli might be on to something 
