Protecting the better driveway

I recently posted about the work undertaken to improve our driveway.  That has definitely been a major improvement although, being in "glass half empty" mode, it hasn't been tested by a big thunderstorm.  To try to protect it against that we are putting in some earthworks above the garden to divert the water around the garden block.  That work started yesterday.

The first shot shows Jordan making with a mini-backhoe.  The precision with which he can use this machine is astonishing!

 Here is the "first draft" of his work.  Note the great big rocks he was digging up!

There will be more to come on this as the work progresses.

Never mind the cuckoos, here's the first Acacia!

I trust the late Mr Ritchie and the still vital Mr Lydon won't mind me borrowing the cadence of their record.

It is well known that when The Times was the newspaper of record (ie before becoming taken over by the Murdoch Empire) they would often publish, in early April,  a Letter to The Editor along the following lines.

The Vicarage

Chuntering under Ouse

Hants

Sir

On the Sabbath, whilst composing a Sermon, I chanced to hear a Cuckoo.

Sincerely 

N Bassingthwaighte (Rev.)

In the Canberra area this model was followed for a number of years by local ornithologist McComas Taylor announcing the first blowfly of Summer.

I have seen neither a Cuckoo nor a blowie for some months.  We don't expect to see blossom on the Acacia dealbata until mid-August when it gives us optimism that Winter is on its way towards ending.

So it was with some surprise that Frances spotted some open blossom this morning on her run.

 Here is the bloom along with the buds and silver foliage more typical of June.

Noting, and agreeing with, the comment by Ian, here is a somewhat more seasonal bit of flowering, from Mt Ainslie.  There were quite a few Hakea decurrens flowering at the saddle with Mt Majura.

A visitor to the garden

It is very common for us to get Eastern Grey Kangaroos of various shapes and sizes on our lawn.  This is seen, and barked about, with disapproval by the small dog.  The roos take the hint and nick off (although these days that is done more in a sense of it being their role in a well defined game as opposed to panic)!

This morning we had the pleasure of a visit from Wallabia bicolor, which I have always known as a Swamp Wallaby (or Swampie).

The fact that it merely looked at, rather than munched, the camelia behind the callistemon is why the visit was pleasurable from both perspectives.  The species is apparently unusual for macropods in getting most of its food by browsing rather than grazing.

The name of 'bicolor' presumably refers to the chestnut and dark grey ignoring the light grey on the lower face and chest,  I suppose for a taxonomist to get 2 out of 3 is pretty good.  The selectors of vernacular names also get 2/3 since the species does seem to like dense bush as found in Swamps, and on the basis of expert advice from the small dog, leave a very strong scent (so Stinker is correct, albeit somewhat pejorative).  I disagree with any moves to makes its "official" vernacular name (oxymoron anyone?) Black-tailed Wallaby!

On the evening of 15 June I went to deposit some prawn carcasses in the dam and disturbed a wombat on the lawn.  The small dog - indoors - caught the scent and Was Not Happy (nor quiet).  We often see evidence of their presence

but only rarely sight the animals themselves.  Perhaps I should have followed Denis' example and left this as a text-only record?

Mistletoe and birds

This follows on from two previous posts on Mistletoes (here and there).  My principal reason for following up was receiving some comments suggesting that mistletoes were absent from the higher country because Mistletoebirds (Dicaem hirundinaceum) do not occur in the higher wet forests. (Steve Wilson's definitive book "Birds of the ACT: Two Centuries of Change" notes that a few Mistletoebirds were banded in the mountains but ".. it is rare in the ranges.".)

It seemed strange that Watson and Herring show mistletoes to be a keystone resource if the plants are so dependent on a single species of bird.  

According to them - both from their bibliography and the references in the text -the key resource on mistletoe- bird interaction is still "Reid N  "Pollination and seed dispersal of mistletoes (Loranthaceae) by birds in southern Australia." published in  "The Dynamic Partnership: Birds and Plants in Australia" Ford and Paton (eds) 1986.  It seemed like an interesting volume, despite its vintage, so a copy was acquired (thank you Lost and Found Books).  As well as the article by Reid, "Forde N "Relationships between Birds and Fruits in temperate Australia." " was relevant to my enquiries.

The following table contains all species identified by Reid as feeding on nectar or seeds from Mistletoe species.  In addition the species shown in green were reported by Forde, but not by Reid.  The species marked in red are those which are considered by Reid (in another paper) to be the only species "undeniably involved in mistletoe dispersal".

ACT status	nectar feeders	seed feeders
COMMON	Striated Thornbill	Gang-gang Cockatoo
	Brown Thornbill	Galah
	Eastern Spinebill	Crimson Rosella
	Yellow-faced Honeyeater	Eastern Rosella
	White-eared Honeyeater	Fuscous Honeyeater
	Noisy Miner	White-plumed Honeyeater
	Brown-headed Honeyeater	Red Wattlebird
	Noisy Friarbird	White-naped Honeyeater
		Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike
		Olive-backed Oriole
		Pied Currawong
		Grey Currawong
		Australian Raven
		Little Raven
		Silvereye
		Common Starling
		Common Blackbird
		Mistletoebird
LESS COMMON	Yellow-tufted Honeyeater	Emu
	Scarlet Honeyeater	Cockatiel
	Crescent Honeyeater	Little Lorikeet
	New Holland Honeyeater
	Masked Woodswallow
	White-browed Woodswallow
RARE	Chestnut-rumped Thornbill	White-fronted Honeyeater
	Lewin's Honeyeater	Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater
	Tawny-crowned Honeyeater	Little Wattlebird
		Regent Honeyeater
		Painted Honeyeater
NOT RECORDED IN ACT	Purple-crowned Lorikeet	Brown Cuckoo-Dove
	Inland Thornbill	Rose-crowned Fruit-Dove
	Purple-gaped Honeyeater	Red-winged Parrot
	Yellow-plumed Honeyeater	Blue Bonnet
	Grey-fronted Honeyeater	Mulga Parrot
	Brown Honeyeater	Australian (Mallee) Ringneck
	White-cheeked Honeyeater	Pied Honeyeater
	White-throated Honeyeater	Singing Honeyeater
	Yellow-bellied Sunbird	Yellow-throated Miner
		Grey Honeyeater
		Striped Honeyeater
		Little Crow
		Torresian Crow
		Metallic Starling

The two columns show that some species are known to take nectar from the flowers (playing an important role in fertilisation of the species) while others are known to be frugivorous.  Several authors note that some of the seed eaters - especially the parrots and their close relatives - are seed predators in that they damage the seeds beyond the ability to germinate.

I have also categorised (heuristically I am afraid) the bird species according to their occurrence around Canberra.  Of the birds common around Canberra, the Mistletoebird is the only 'proven disperser' of mistletoes but there are a good number of non-predator seed feeders in the area.  Many of these, including Red Wattlebird. White-naped Honeyeater, and Pied Currawong are common in the Ranges and could be expected over a number of years to have introduced mistletoe seeds to the area.

That we have not recorded Amyema sp. in the Ranges cannot be due solely to the absence of Mistletoebirds.  I suggest next time a WW goes into the Brindabella Ranges keeping an eye upwards would be a good idea !

Getting soggy?

There are various ways of getting wet.  One. exemplified here by a Superb fairy-wren, is to dunk yourself in a bird bath.

Another way is to visit an area with a weather forecast like this:

That was from the Elders website.  This map from the BoM, showing aggregate expected rainfall for the next 8 days, tells pretty much the same story.

For those not familiar with Australian geography, Mallacoota is on the Eastern edge of the purple splotch.  It may not get as much as the Victorian mountains (and much of their precipitation appears likely to be white and slippery, but it is obviously going to be very damp at the Coast.

In an exchange of badinage our friend who owns the place at which we stay pointed out that if we mowed the lawn to watch out for stranded fish: apparently they jam the catcher!

We have deferred for a week.

As it happened:
The Wednesday was very drizzly at Carwoola (9.9mm) but not much seemed to fall during the day at Mallacoota.  However by 6am on Thursday they had scored 50.8mm which is pretty much on the money!

At noon on Thursday the BoM weather included a Flood Watch alert  

• "Scattered showers increasing to rain in the evening have been forecast for East Gippsland catchments during Thursday. Rain with heavy falls has been forecast for Friday. Rainfall totals of up to 30 mm have been forecast for Thursday and up to 100 mm have been forecast for Friday for the East Gippsland catchments with higher isolated totals possible.
• The forecast rainfall is expected to lead to minor to moderate flooding across the East Gippsland catchments from late Thursday. If the rainfall totals are in the upper range of the forecast then areas of major flooding may develop.

Overall, on Thursday the town scored 10mm with a further 23mm coming on the Friday.  

Heyfield, the haunt of Gouldiae is a bit west of Mallacoota and has been getting a nice lot of rain.

As the radar for Canberra has crapped out it is a bit hard to tell what is happening here.  I did enjoy the mixed messages evident on the BoM website about this (click on image for a readable version)!

What habitat is that? Proof of concept

I recently posted about a plan to use David Keith's work in "Ocean Shores to Desert Dunes" to attach habitat types to the sites visited by the WednesdayWalkers (WW).  I found this to be a rather obsessive task and it distracted me more than somewhat from entering WW data to the database.  However I have

1. entered up the indicative species for the 13 habitat types which appear to cover the area of activity of the WWs;
2. found a way of selecting (in most cases) the main habitat type; and 
3. plotted this on Google Earth 

Pink dots are grassy woodland, Light blue are wet sclerophyll forest, Purple are dry sclerophyll, Yellow are heaths and Green are grasslands.  The various different sizes are different subtypes of the habitat (eg distinguishing (sort of) "Tablelands clay grassy woodlands" from "Southern Tablelands grassy woodlands".)

From a very quick 'eyeball' the map above looks reasonably sensible and thus I will conclude that the process broadly works.

Obviously one job for the future is working out a way of presenting the maps more systematically, but thanks to the array of icons available on Earth Point that just requires some more careful thought rather than inventing cold fusion.

There are a range of other jobs available to fill up any spare moments.  The first of these is completing the data entry task so that a repeat analysis looks at the full range of data.  Other jobs include:

• how to deal with sites where two or more habitat types get the same high score;
• what to do about sites with very few species (eg a quick roadside stop on the way to somewhere else);
• do species that are listed as indicative of many types (in this area) add value to the analysis?

(As a bit more detail on the last point 201 species in my list match the indicative species listed by Keith for one or more habitat types.  112 of these only link to one habitat type but the remaining 89 species link to a greter number with the most extreme case being Acacia dealbata which is an indicator for 7 habitat types  - of the 13 covered by the analysis.)

So I think the process will go on hold for a few weeks while I enter data.

A trip to the Plain

Over the past few wet years a swamp in the middle of the Hoskinstown Plain has produced many exciting records. It has been drying out recently but I thought it worth going for a visit to see what is there.

For the swamp itself the answer is a lot of dry brown vegetable matter and no waterbirds (nor indeed any water).  However despite the weather not being promising as I headed off ...

... nor much better when I got down to the Plain (despite some attractive Herefords being present).....

 .. we (my friend Julienne joined me) found some good birds.  The first was a flock of Red-rumped Parrots.  We counted 61 in a row of trees, and there may have been more.  This shows a few of them.

There were also 21 Crested Pigeons and about the same number of Yellow-rumped Thornbills  in this area.

On our way back from the ex-swamp we found a single Golden-headed Cisticola, which is not a common bird in the area.

 As we got back towards the road the expected Flame Robins put in an appearance.  Julienne couned at least 7 and at least 3 of them were males.

 This one decided to improve a thistle by perching on it.

When the Robins moved off they were joined by a Diamond Firetail but this was too far off to photograph.

As I headed off back home a large flock of seed-eaters flew amongst the hawthorns.  There appeared to be about 100 birds with approximately equal numbers of Double-barred Finches (very close to where we saw them 2 days earlier) European Goldfinches and House Sparrows.