Next week from 11 March Condobolin will celebrate two years of record-breaking waterbird breeding seasons, captured in an exhibition for all to enjoy. 

The exhibition ‘A Waterbird Breeding Spectacular: An Exhibition of Waterbird Photography’ was the inevitable result of the strong bird-watching community within the Lachlan Shire. 

Condobolin local Warren Chad is both an avid birdlife photographer and completes surveys during the breeding seasons. 

“The last couple of seasons here have been phenomenal, very wet,” Mr Chad said. 

“It’s a boom and bust story with the birds…when it’s wet they go hard and breed like steam and then they’ll have dry years where they don’t breed much at all.”

“We’ve had big rookeries of thousands of nests along the river here in the last couple of years, which has been fantastic,” he said. 

A few of many ibis that could be found over the last few years. (Photo: Warren Chad)

The season also saw over 100,000 ibis nests counted at Booligal wetlands and around 49,000 pelican nests at Lake Brewster. 

There were also large numbers of spoonbills, egrets, herons and other water dependent birds like cormorants, ducks, magpie geese and grebes.

While bird watchers from near and far come to enjoy the waterbird life that the shire has to enjoy, the images featured will display breeding experiences in places that the public can’t access. 

"These places are special - some of them recognised internationally - and we feel very privileged getting out into these wetlands to witness the waterbird breeding,” said Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder Dr Simon Banks.

 “We wanted to share what it's like to be amongst the chaos and sheer scale of waterbird breeding in various Murray-Darling Basin wetlands.” 

The exhibition will also include an educational component, portraying the various life stages of various birds and how water for the environment is used to support large-scale waterbird breeding.

Mr Chad said that with dry seasons approaching at any time, river health will be a key to sustaining strong populations. 

“It’s critical that we continue to implement environmental water to keep these rivers ticking over as best we can,” Mr Chad said. 

“We’ve altered (the rivers) a lot, we’ve put dams on them, we use a lot of the water for irrigation now. They’re not running the way they used to run.”

Mr Chad and other contributors will be at the official opening night put on by the Lachlan Arts Council on Thursday 14 March from 6pm. 

The exhibition will be on display during opening hours from 11-21 March at the Condobolin Community Centre.