Reportable birds of Mallacoota

A member of the Mallacoota Birds Facebook page recently conversed with a resident of the village who was interested in birds but didn't use eBird.  He wondered what birds were of sufficient interest to be reported to the Facebook page.  This post is an initial effort to answer that question (accepting that any bird can be doing interesting things and/or stir up interest in an observer for many reasons).

Cutting to the chase, here are some suggested guidelines for birds to report.

1. It is suggested that the best thing is to report all birds seen on birding trips to eBird so that this information is available for analysis.  However some people may wish to prioritise their reporting so what follows are some suggested criteria for high-value reports;
2. If you think numbers are large enough to be remarkable, they probably are, so report them!
3. There is a particular lack of information about birds in Winter - any reports for that season would be interesting;
4. Any information about breeding activities (from display to feeding young out of the nest) is important.
5. Many of the pelagic species are rarely reported so any species seen out to sea - either on a fishing trip or sea-watching from the clifftops - is of interest.
6. A list of species infrequently reported to ebird in included below.  Sightings of these could be shared with the Group.
7. Lists of migrants are also given below.  These species should be reported if out od season.

Methods etc

My first step was to download all 170,000 eBird records for East Gippsland Shire (as that is a standard area used by eBird).  A summary of that data set showing all species names and a reporting rate is here.

I then defined an area around Mallacoota in the form of a rectangle with:

• the NW corner at Genoa;
• the SW corner just West of Seal Creek (the same longitude as Genoa);
• the SE corner at the same latitude as the SW corner and the longitude set by where the State Border crosses the coast; and
• the NE corner at the latitude of Genoa and the longitude set by where the State Border crosses the coast.

This is roughly illustrated below together with five sub-regions, reflecting areas of differing levels of birding access.

Using Google Earth to measure the size of polygonshat is an area of roughly 825 sq km. Of this area about:

• 83sq km (10%) is in NSW (section 1); 
• 230 sq km (30%) is in VIC to the East of the Inlet (section 2);   
• 95 sq km (10%) is to the West of the Genoa-Mallacoota Rd (section 3) and
• 244 sq km (30%) is ocean;
• This leaves 170 sq km (20%) in the area where most birding takes place. (section 5)

I used ACCESS to subset the East Gippsland dataset for records that fell within the rectangular area.  That gave a dataset of 39,000 records  for what I am calling Mallacoota.  They cover 301 taxa (including records only identified to genus level).  A summary of that data set, for 'good' species, in .csv format is here, also showing reporting rates for the standard seasons.

In what follows I have used ACCESS and EXCEL to analyse that data set.  There is much scope to sort out interesting facts about the avian geography of the area and I will do that as time permits.  As a starting point I will primarily address the question of what birds to report: this will go a fair bit beyond a list of rarities!

Taxonomy

In what follows I have ordered species according to the taxonomic codes used by Birdlife Australia since they are the official birding organisation in Australia.  However in terms of common names I use the names which eBird has adopted.  In most cases the names are the same, but occasionally there are variations: this is annoying in the extreme but taxonomists don't care about that.  I hope this doesn't inconvenience you too much!

Unusual Numbers of a species

I haven't yet attempted to work out what constitutes an unusual number for each species.  In fact I am not sur that is very helpful.  So that is up to the observer.  A couple of personal examples may assist:

• In  late Autumn it is not uncommon for flocks of honeyeaters to be migrating along the Inlet past Karbeethong so seeing a few dozen Yellow Faced Honeyeaters or 6 -10 Red Wattlebirds is not exceptional.  However continual movements over a few hours giving totals of 3,000 Yellow-faced Honeyeaters (in 2017) and 297 Red Wattlebirds (in 2018) are worth recording.
• Seeing a few Australian Pied Oystercatchers from Captain Stevensons Point is quite usual.  However finding ~30 in a tight flock at Quarry Beach is noteworthy.

Seasonality

As records to eBird all include a date of observation it is simple to obtain a measure of number of observations by month.  I started this analysis by looking at the number of records (a species reported on a checklist is a record) and the number of checklists per month.

There is a very clear seasonal pattern for observer effort  both number of checklists submitted and number of records made.  I'm not going to speculate on the cause of this but will note that more information is needed on the birds in Winter.  As an incentive, I'll note that the number of records per list is quite constant over the year at 17.5+2 species per list.

This topic will be discussed further under "Migration" below.

Breeding activity

Great importance is attached to records of breeding activity since if birds don't breed they cease to exist!  A lot of worthwhile effort goes in to protecting the birds which breed on the beaches but there is very little information around on overall breeding activity in Mallacoota.  

Even using the wide list of activities in eBird we only have 106 breeding records (0.27% of records - boo, hiss) for 52 of the 301 taxa.  By way of contrast in the Canberra area 2.7% - 10 X the Mallacoota rate - of eBird records have breeding records.

So any information about breeding activities (from display to feeding young out of the nest) is valuable knowledge.

Seabirds

Doing a rough measurement on Google Earth the coastline within my designated area is approximately 30km long - of which the 17km  from town to Seal Creek has relatively easy access.  There are also a range of good lookouts along the coast and there is now - after spending many dollars  - good boat access to the ocean from Bastion Point.  So there are many opportunities for observing pelagic species.

However, except for Australasian Gannet there are very few  records of these species and only two (Short-tailed and Wedge-tailed Shearwaters  have more than 20 records (my upper limit for rare birds).  So any records of pelagic species except Gannets are unusual and worthy of reporting to the Facebook groups.  A list of these species is:

Brown Skua; Yellow-nosed Albatross; White-capped Albatross; Black-browed Albatross; Wandering Albatross; White-faced Storm-Petrel; Great-winged/Gray-faced Petrel; Fairy Prion; White-chinned Petrel; Wedge-tailed Shearwater; Short-tailed Shearwater; Sooty/Short-tailed Shearwater; Hutton's Shearwater; Fluttering Shearwater; Brown Booby

Unusually observed species

I started this process with a personal idea of which species were unusual in the Mallacoota area and found that just about all of these had been reported to eBird less than 20 times.  So I have defined an unusual species - by definition noteworthy and reportable to the Facebook group - as one recorded  less than 20 times in the Mallacoota area.  I have listed the species that meet that criterion below Rather than simply have a long list in 'pure' taxonomic order I have grouped the species so as to get birds of (largely) similar habitats together.

Emu; Stubble Quail; Brown Quail

Blue-billed Duck; Pink-eared Duck (except at Water Treatment Works); Freckled Duck; Musk Duck; Great Crested Grebe; Baillon's Crake; Spotless Crake; Dusky Moorhen; Black Bittern; Striated Heron; Intermediate Egret; Yellow-billed Spoonbill

Brown Cuckoo-Dove; Peaceful Dove; Channel-billed Cuckoo; Tawny Frogmouth; White-throated Nightjar; Pacific Swift; Rainbow Bee-eater; Dollarbird

Banded Stilt; Banded Lapwing; Red-kneed Dotterel; Black-tailed Godwit; Ruddy Turnstone; Great Knot; Red Knot; Sharp-tailed Sandpiper; Curlew Sandpiper; Latham's Snipe; Terek Sandpiper; Common Sandpiper; Common Greenshank; Wood Sandpiper; Kelp Gull; Whiskered Tern; White-fronted Tern; Common Tern; Little Penguin

Osprey; Black-shouldered Kite; Square-tailed Kite; Little Eagle; Spotted Harrier; Collared Sparrowhawk; Black Kite; Sooty Owl; Barn Owl; Powerful Owl; Brown Falcon; Peregrine Falcon

Cockatiel; Long-billed Corella; Little Corella; Sulphur-crested Cockatoo; Eastern Rosella; Swift Parrot; Turquoise Parrot; Scaly-breasted Lorikeet; 

Noisy Friarbird; Little Friarbird; White-cheeked Honeyeater; Brown-headed Honeyeater; Singing Honeyeater; White-plumed Honeyeater; Yellow-tufted Honeyeater; Noisy Miner

Brown Treecreeper; White-throated Gerygone; Weebill; Pilotbird; Chestnut-rumped Heathwren; Striated Fieldwren; Yellow Thornbill; Buff-rumped Thornbill; White-winged Triller; Spotted Quail-thrush; Olive Whistler

Masked Woodswallow; White-browed Woodswallow; Spangled Drongo; Satin Flycatcher; Pink Robin; Flame Robin; Diamond Firetail; European Greenfinch; European Goldfinch; Eurasian Skylark; Golden-headed Cisticola; Rufous Songlark; Little Grassbird; Common Myna

Migrants

Some species move across the Earth on a regular basis, and are commonly observed in some months but rarely in others.  I have assessed this attribute for the birds of Mallacoota by comparing the reporting rates in Winter (June, July and August) and Summer (December, January and February).  

In essence,  where the Summer rate is 1.5 or more times the Winter rate (or the Winter rate is zero) I have defined the species as a Summer migrant, and where the ratio is 0.5 or less the species is a Winter migrant.  Applying these rules strictly meant that a few species not generally regarded as migrants were included in both situations: in these cases I have concluded that something makes them less obvious in the "low season" so have not included them.

I have not included species in these lists if they are rated as unusual overall and thus included in the list above.

Summer Migrants

These species move away in Autumn either to find better food resources or to go to breeding colonies. The species should be reported if seen in Winter.

Topknot Pigeon; Pacific Koel; Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo; Shining Bronze-Cuckoo; Fan-tailed Cuckoo; White-throated Needletail; Buff-banded Rail; Little Tern; Cattle Egret; Black-faced Cormorant; Pied Cormorant; Swamp Harrier; Sacred Kingfisher; Australian Hobby; Glossy Black-Cockatoo; Musk Lorikeet; Little Lorikeet; Eastern Bristlebird; White-naped Honeyeater; Yellow-faced Honeyeater; Brown Gerygone; Large-billed Scrubwren; Black-faced Cuckooshrike; Rufous Whistler; Golden Whistler; Olive-backed Oriole; Dusky Woodswallow; Rufous Fantail; Leaden Flycatcher; Black-faced Monarch; Rose Robin; Mistletoebird; Fairy Martin

Winter migrants 

These species come to the area in Winter, probably seeking more abundant food than is available around their breeding areas in Winter.  In several cases they are moving down from the higher country.  The species should be reported if seen in Summer.

Australasian Grebe (except at Water Treatment Plant); Hoary-headed Grebe (except at Water Treatment Plant); Red-capped Plover; Double-banded Plover (from NZ); Black-fronted Dotterel; Pacific Gull; Great Egret; Australasian Gannet; Crescent Honeyeater (from high country); White-eared Honeyeater (from high country); Tawny-crowned Honeyeater (from high country); Restless Flycatcher; Bassian Thrush (from high country)