Bird-watchers
flock to Werribee treatment plant, near Melbourne, to see Eurasia native
Tue 15
Jan 2019 06.46 GMTLast modified on Tue 15 Jan
2019 06.48 GMT
The
Werribee sewage ponds are one of the most popular bird-watching locations in
Australia. On a good day, says Birdlife Australia’s Sean Dooley, you may see as
many as five or six other cars there.
That was
before the tufted duck arrived.
“I counted when I left, there were 35 cars of
birders,” Dooley said, adding: “It was a mega-twitch.”
“It’s the
biggest twitching event I have witnessed first-hand in Australia — it felt like
I was in England,” he said.
The cause
of all this fuss is a rather unassuming-looking black duck with white flanks
and bright yellow eyes. It was spotted and identified by some visiting American
twichers on 2 January as a male tufted duck, Aythya fuligula, a species of
diving duck native to northern Eurasia but not uncommonly found in coastal areas
in North America.
It is the
first time the species has been sighted in Australia.
The
visiting twitchers alerted the locals, who shared the find on social media.
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