Despite abundant suitable habitat, most water birds are simply not present this year.

A couple of obvious examples at Lake Wendouree are the coot and the hoary-headed grebe.

Coots have been common and obvious at the lake in summer for many years, but only three could be found there last Sunday. Hoary-headed grebes are absent altogether - not just from Lake Wendouree, but from the whole district.

A large percentage of Australia's waterbirds are most likely in flooded inland parts of Australia. This explains why we did not find any grey teal, white-necked heron, pied stilt, terns or Latham's snipe on our count.

Lake Goldsmith is full, but is almost birdless, apart from a few swans and shelducks. Lakes Burrumbeet and Learmonth are similar.

Unexpectedly, no straw-necked ibises were seen, perhaps because the long-grassed paddocks were unsuitable for them. They may move in now that grass-cutting has commenced this week, providing suitable feeding sites for them.

We were pleased to hear stubble quail and brown songlark calling from crops in a few places.

A surprise among the land bird totals was the very low number of galahs, with hardly any at places where they are usually seen.

Raptors were also scarce, although this was probably an anomaly for the day, rather than a snapshot of the region in early December. We found small numbers of just four species.

On bird-count days we often miss some relatively common birds.

This year the two most prominent misses for our team were Australian raven and red-browed finch.

Our best birds were royal spoonbill at Lake Wendouree and peaceful dove at Clunes.

Not so welcome were six widely-separated sightings of single common mynas.

A day count covering a large area means that many places are not covered thoroughly because of time constraints.

Accordingly, not much time was spent searching for species that would probably have been found with more time and effort.

Our total for the day was 97 species, 15 - 20 fewer than most years, mainly due to lack of waterbirds.

Once common across the landscape, the very large and green growling grass-frog is now scarce. It is easily distinguished by its growling call.

This species was one of several heard recently in a swamp near Clunes.

The extended call starts off with a low growl that rises slightly before descending again, to be followed by a couple of short deep croaks: "grawk, crock-crock".

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We found this rather intriguing fungus at Mait's Rest, Great Ocean Road.

- J.Z, Mt Clear.

There are many species of similar-looking bracket fungi such as this. However, this one is probably the hairy curtain crust, a common bracket fungus that varies considerably in colour.

A feature of this species is its hairy upper surface, most obvious on younger specimens, which is not visible in the photo.

Yellow-edged brackets also occur in a couple of other species, but the shape and size of the fanned brackets in the photo point to the "hairy curtain crust", or Stereum hirsutum.

This tough, long-lived fungus is usually noticed from autumn to spring, growing on dead wood in open and thick forest. The fan-shaped brackets often overlap.

Different clumps may be different colours, and their age also affects their colour.

Questions and photos are welcome.

Email to rthomas@vic.australis.com.au, or send to Roger Thomas at The Courier, PO Box 21, Ballarat, 3353.

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