The House(s) of Fran_mart

If only I'd started when I was 31!  If I had been able to turn up every week that I was living in Canberra (I didn't get to Canberra until 1983, and have had 20 months in Ottawa and 24 in Tanzania) I'd have 1520 runs rather than 34! But I didn't turn up until a few months back and have had a few weeks off already.  Whatever, today was a great day for a run and I felt capable of doing a bit of running so I did.  My first thought was that the course has changed due to the efforts of some horny sons of toil blocking the path.  The first mountain: no running up this,  Thanks to nice long downhill to Hindmarsh Drive and walking briskly up to the yurt I went through half way in 26:19 - comfortably under 9 minute kilometres.  The pretty clouds and clear blue sky indicated the pleasant conditions. I finally remembered to take a photo of the 5th kilometre area, despite a cracking sub-8 minute run for that leg. The final kilometre was not too bad although I did forg

In a recent debate on a Facebook page for our community I made a comment about feral cats massacring native wildlife.  This led to some criticism and a demand that I produce scientific evidence.  Here we go. A starting point is a fact sheet put out by the Australian Government Department responsible for the Environment and many other things:  This says “They generally eat small mammals, but also catch birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and insects - taking prey up to the size of a brush-tail possum. In pastoral regions, they feed largely on young rabbits, but in other areas feral cats prey mainly on native animals. “   It isn’t clear where is meant by pastoral regions: the choices could vary from Areas  not climatically suitable for regular cropping; or Areas where grazing is a major industry. They continue: ” On the mainland, they are identified as a threat to 35 species of birds, 36 mammals, 7 reptiles and 3 amphibians. Cats have probably contributed to the extinction of

As Frances was going for a day-long bird drawing class today I thought I'd have a crack at finding a few interesting birds around the Northern parts of the ACT.  A constraint was planning to take the small dog so canophobic areas such as Canberra Nature Park and Namadgi were not possible,  Here is the plan: Start at M16 Artspace in Griffith. Yerrabi Pond Amaroo - target bird is Red-capped Robin; Ibis St, Nicholls - check the Eastern side of Gungahlin Pond; Urriara Woodland - Pied Butcherbird East West Rd, Stromlo - Hooded Robin Urriara East Reserve - back up for Pied Butcherbird Edgeworth Pond Coombs - White-fronted Chat, Fairy Martin All up the route is, according to Google ,aps, 109km.  Can I get 100 species?  I would do it on my bike but too difficult to schlep the telescope (and the small dog). As I started off there was a very good collection of lenticular clouds over the airport.  Not the best photo but I was parked on the hard shoulder of the Majura Parkway so

In case you wonder why I am so fixated on rain, here is an image of Whiskers Creek this morning. The leaves are off some willows growing along the Creek. In a normal year they'd shed their leaves in late March.  Drought stress is getting them off now, as happened last year. A post on a weather related site of which I am a member  showed that we were on the cusp of some serious rainfall next Sunday.  This has led me to snuffle around various forecasts to see what they say. My first call was to Wunderground which had zip for Carwoola on Saturday and 7.8mm on Sunday. I then went to BoM which as the 'headline forecast' for Canberra had 2-8mm on Saturday and 1-5mm on Sunday. I then went to the BoM rainfall forecast for Southern Tablelands which showed the Carwoola area as no rain Saturday and then this.... ....for Sunday. Very similar to the pattern in Andrew's post. We - almost directly below the 'a' at the end of Canberra - appear to be on the boundary bet

I was looking back through some of the posts I have done about the 2016 Census and found a comment about being able to analyse imputation rates by Urban-Rural nature of area once that classification is included in Table Builder.  That data release has now happened so here is the analysis I have done.  As is often the case, investigating that topic led to a number of other interesting topics so this post has got rather long but hopefully is still coherent. By way of background, nearly everyone that completes a form provides an age.  Thus imputed age is an indicator of non-response.  In many cases this is where: it is believed the dwelling is occupied but  a completed questionnaire has not been received.   In the past both situations would be identified by a Collector who delivered and collected the questionnaires, and that is still the case for rural areas and small towns.  In Major Urban Areas for the 2016 Census the first situation would be based upon Australia Post having an e

After the leader survived Horse Park Drive (tailback from the Federal Highway to Anthony Rolfe Avenue) and another jam caused by road works on Gundaroo Rd he made it to the appointed spot.  25 Members gathered on the shores of Yerrabi Pond with the intention of heading to the Western end.  Departure was slightly delayed by the appearance of 5 Superb Parrots but we began our shore patrol about 8:45.  Had we waited a little longer I might have got a better photo. Counting of Eurasian Coots began as soon as we could see water! Cutting to the chase, by the time we turned for home the total was up to 470.  Bill Graham advised that at peak he had assessed 800 Coots here, but he agreed there were many less today.  A Little Pied Cormorant posed nicely. On the shore we spotted a Red-rumped Parrot being fed by an adult female which counted as Feeding Young (which presumably maps to the COG DY category). My photo skills were improving, but still not as good as Sandra's image on the c

The idea behind this post is to give an easy way of identifying the posts I have done about the 2016 Census and indicating what they are about.  This will be updated as the impulse strikes me to work on other topics. 10 Collection phase Dwelling count; age profiles,collection methods 170627  My observations in Carwoola Talks about the collection process in our area. 21 Data quality Imputation rates 170712 Imputation 1 A brief look at rates 22 Data quality Imputation rates, collection errors,CIAP 170712 Imputation 2 The importance of collection methods in determining imputation rates. 23 Data Quality Imputation rates, collection errors 180221 Census imputation by type of area ; Comparison of urban and rural rates of imputation  29 Data quality Output media, Data consistency 180217  Dwelling counts  Identifies and resolves some issue with different sources of Census data. 30 Topics Age, Ancestry,Geography 170721 Basic output  Explains the changes in Geography.

The clouds were well positioned last evening.  Take a snap to the West ... . ,, then a snap to the East. Lets do the evening again.

Reader advisory:  Please note that is a tale about an error - so read the whole post before trying to emulate this!  As consequnce of my discoveries some of my earlier posts about the 2016 Census have been massaged a little to reflect my new understanding. When the first tranche of 2016 Census data was released in June 2016 I seized upon the General Profile for Carwoola with glee and did a basic comparison of people and dwellings between 2016 and 2011 Census results.  There was no drama with the people comparison, but the comparison of data from the Profile with information for 2011 Table Builder results suggested a fairly serious undercount of dwellings in 2016.  This is that comparison (its an image not a table). I developed various conspiracy theories about how this arose and in February 2018 decided to document the issues with the poor count of dwellings.  As I greatly prefer using Table Builder (TB) to wading through a squillion worksheets of profile data I created a TB table