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We had to wait for three hours, until the fog lifted, before we could get away. Unfortunately, our usual plan to fly down the River Murray from Albury to Mildura was not on today. On top of the fog, a severe southerly front was coming through, with low clouds and rain. We decided to fly direct to Mildura and hope we could do some survey in the afternoon.

After lunch, we headed south of Mildura to do surveys planned for Thursday afternoon, around Swan Hill in Victoria. 

From here, we went across to survey the Kerang Lakes, a system of freshwater and salt lakes near Swan Hill.

The lakes were much drier than in previous years, particularly the temporary wetlands. Where there was water and a lake was shallow, there were lots of waterbirds.

Starting in the south, we surveyed to the north across Lake Bael Bael. 

Most of Lake Bael Bael was dry but there was a large shallow water area in the middle with thousands of waterbirds, mainly grey teal. But there were also swans, coot, Australian shelduck and a few pelicans. The water was so shallow that you could see large carp moving with their backs out of the water in the middle.  

Around here there are salt lakes, among the regulated permanent freshwater lakes. 

Lake Elizabeth was one salt lake with hundreds of Grey Teal, coot and Black Swans. When these lakes are not too salty, you can see the aquatic vegetation growing in the bottom of the lake and providing food for the herbivorous waterbirds.

The permanent freshwater lakes, like Kangaroo and Racecourse Lake seldom have many waterbirds, just a few Great Cormorants, the odd Pelican and Black Duck although one of them had a small flock of Great Crested Grebes.

We then headed across to three lakes, Third Lake, Middle Lake and Reedy Lake. Third Lake was dry.

These are always interesting because they often have small rookeries of White Ibis and Straw-necked Ibis. There were about a hundred nests today. 

From here we went to the northern lakes of the Kerang Lakes. Here, there were quite a few waterbirds on Lake Tutchewop, mainly grey teal and coot. This contrasts some of the more salty lakes, which were too salty to support any waterbirds.

Finally, we surveyed the Hattah Lakes in the Hattah-Kulkyne National Park. Many of these lakes have dried back and there was not the widespread flooding we have seen in recent years. 

There were large numbers of fish-eating birds on some of the lakes that had still held water, these included  Pelicans and cormorants. But overall not very many waterbirds were seen.