Lorne is overflowing with bird-life, hopefully the increase in development and cat numbers won’t change this too much. Even in the last few years the Pied currawongs seem to hang around all year round, bigger and more boisterous, they don’t seem to have had too much effect on the smaller bids — yet. Then down at the river, the ducks are in a perpetual state of feeding frenzy, stuffed to immobility on bread from the tourists. We’re just as guilty, putting out seed for the parrots and the odd bit of bacon rind for the kookaburras…

From breakfast to lunch time I think we counted thirty different species, the first five in under a minute just by looking out the window. King parrots, a Gang-gang cockatoo, a currawong chasing a family of blue wrens, a pair of Eastern spinebills chasing each other through the wattle branches. Thornbills picking up insects, Red wattlebirds and New Holland honeyeaters poking into the grevillea flowers.

Walking down to the beach there’s the ubiquitous magpie and raven, Black duck and Wood duck in the river, a Pied cormorant perched above it and a pair of White-faced herons asleep on the bank. Sulphur-crested cockatoos and Galahs over the scrub, Pacific gulls, Little terns, Masked lapwings and another cormorant out at the pier. “Gerroff ya stoopid duck,” yells the fisherman — somewhat ignorantly — as the cormorant steals his bait for the second time. Common starlings, sparrows, Indian mynas and swallows all hopping or flitting around as we have a coffee.

A Black cormorant, a Laughing kookaburra, then out on a bike ride later in the day there are three Pied oyster-catchers flying over the rockpools, Goldfinches near the pub, Pied mudlarks on the lawns. Enough! I don’t think I got to thirty, but I probably missed some.