Mud Islands  The Mud Islands reserve is located within Port Phillip, about south-west of Melbourne, Australia, lying inside Port Phillip Heads, north of Portsea and east of Queenscliff. The land area of about is made up of three low-lying islands surrounding a shallow tidal lagoon connected to the sea by three narrow channels. The shapes and configuration of the islands change over the years due to movement of sand by tidal currents. First sighted by Europeans in 1802, the islands were originally named "Swan Isles" because of the large number of swans on the surrounding waters. It was not until 1836 that Lieutenants T M Symonds and H R Henry of surveyed the islands and renamed them "Mud Islands". In 1961, the area of the islands above high water was proclaimed a permanent reserve for the management of wildlife. It forms part of the Port Phillip Bay (Western Shoreline) and Bellarine Peninsula Ramsar Site, which was designated in 1982, as a wetland of international importance, and it is also included on the Register of the National Estate. Since 2002 it has been, with the adjacent waters, part of the Port Phillip Heads Marine National Park. Within the reserve there are nine native vegetation communities. Seagrass meadows, sand dunes, mudflats and salt marshes support a diversity of life ranging from marine invertebrates to fish and birds. Wind and tide are gradually changing the shape of the islands, although they are partly stabilised by a salt marsh of austral sea-blite and beaded and shrubby glasswort. The dense coastal scrub on the northern island has disappeared, apparently as a result of overgrazing by rabbits. Today only a single specimen of coastal teatree ("Leptospermum laevigatum") remains. The site is part of the Swan Bay and Port Phillip Bay Islands Important Bird Area, identified as such by BirdLife International. Some 70 species of birds have been recorded on the Islands, which form essential breeding, feeding and roosting areas for seabirds and waders, many of them migratory. The isolation of the islands provides protection from predators and makes them an ideal sanctuary for breeding seabirds, notably the five and a half thousand white-faced storm-petrels which, during summer, lay their eggs in burrows in the loose sand of Middle Island. During the day they feed at sea on shrimps and small fish, returning at night to feed their chicks. Although there are fewer than at nearby South Channel Fort, nearly a quarter of the white-faced storm-petrels in Victoria breed on Mud Islands.