Garden Flowers

 Although these are not wild, the weather was nice so I can slip these images - mainly testing some ideas I found in my camera manual - of garden plants, in here.

Colourful skies 23 - 24July

 
Sunset on the 23rd

Sunrise on 24th: from the back lawn ...

.. and out in the street.

The widest setting on my camera.

The time of Herons

 The past few days have been full of Herons and close relatives.  On the 16th I got to the ocean end of the Pumping Station Creek Track and found 2 Little Egrets and a Great Egret.  All of them had some plumes (so thoughts of Plumed Egret - previously Intermediate Egret - crossed my mind).  My usual key feature for Great Egret is the yellow gape going past the eye, but I couldn't get a decent look at that.  However the larger bird was clearly MUCH larger rather than a little bit larger so that was sorted.

In passing I will note the congenital daftness of taxonomists: a bird is known as Intermediate Egret and it is intermediate in size. So Muppets Inc. go and rename it as 'Plumed' while at least 2 other species of Egrets are adorned with plumes!  Go figure: given the PC traits of academia perhaps giving it a middling name was seen as a threat to the birds self-esteem?

Anyhow, on the 17th I was ploughing through a phone conversation with a nice lady arranging contents insurance for our place on St Kilda Rd when I got a phone alert from Frances who was out walking.  The probabilities were this meant one of two things: she had been damaged or she had found an interesting bird.  The latter was more likely so I finished the phone call as a text arrived mentioning a White-necked Heron.  The Mazda was fired up - but not excessively so as that has got expensive in the past (a ticket for 34 Plumed Whistling Ducks @ $15 each) - and I was briskly at Sunny Corner .

I think this was my first Mallacoota White-necked Heron/

Very spiffy!

Also 5 Royal Spoonbills, presumably ejected from the Broome St Lagoon as too much water driven in by the gale.

4 Australian White Ibis, with a bonus Pacific Black Duck.

2 White-faced Herons (quite common when the area is soggy).

Frances reported a Nankeen Night-Heron at the Narrows carpark so I also snapped that. I am reasonably certain a second of this species flushed, but I did 'y get a good look

We had also seen - but not photographed - an Eastern Reef Egret a little earlier.

A July walk on Captains Creek Fire Trail

The weather of 14 July was ordinary, approaching average.  However, rather than spending the whole day more or less huddled over the fire, in the afternoon we went for a walk along a kilometre or so of the Captains Creek Fire Trail.  My aim was to take snaps of the flowers, and hopefully find an orchid or two.  Cutting to the chase we saw no orchids and only heard 4 very common birds!  However I did get some reasonable images of a few flowers.

The first image is at the start and shows a mass of white flowers: mainly Hakea decurrens and Spiridium parviflorum.

A bit further in and Acacia - in this case mainly A. suavolens - in the dominant genus.

There are some impressively tall specimens of Banksia serrata along this walk.  In this example a branch had fallen from the arrowed site.  On hitting the sandy ground it had embedded itself by about 10cm.  I think one would have been unwell  had it sconed one!

Now to some close ups, as identified on iNaturalist.  Hakea decurrens

Spiridium parviflorum - actually some flora here, although very parvi!

Styphelia ericoides - it used to be Leucopogon ericoides but someone needed a publication, and had a DNA sequencer on hand.

In this image the 'beard' is easily visible.

The three colours of Epacris impressa are shown here.

Dampiera stricta

There were a few wattle species in flower.  Here they are in alphabetical order.  A. myrtifolia

A. oxycedrus

A. suavolens

A. ulicifolia

This walk added a few plants to the list of July(ish) plants in flower!

Not quite Mallacoota birds

 On 11 July we headed for Merimbula.  Our first stop was Pambula to check for the Magpie Geese, which were sitting on the edge of the small pond waiting to be seen.

(About 30 minutes later I checked my email and there was a rare bird alert for NSW, including these birds!  Isn''t the internet amazing!)

I discussed the birds with another couple (based in The Fishpen) who had heard that this species requires some additional birds before they will breed .  The Social Organisation  section of the HANZAB entry for this species includes "Family parties always contain a male and a female, but may contain additional males or females or both. Trios of male and two females seem common."  The section goes on to describe in detail the involvement of the auxiliary birds, but stops short of requiring more than two birds before breeding.  However the HANZAB  article does say, under Breeding dispersion  " ... rarely nest as single group but one breeding group of four birds has done so in wild at Seaham Swamp, NSW. "

I searched the fringing Melaleuca hoping for a Nankeen Night Heron and found 2 lurking just above the water.  Pretty well camouflaged.

After a little retail therapy in Merimbula we visited the Osprey site.  Their nest is well obvious and a bird was seen on a nearby tower.  It soon flew over and perched next to the nest ...

.. and then hopped in for a little tidying.

Frances saw two birds at once, while I was entering the record to eBird!  A little later I saw what I thought, from the very long legs, was a White-faced Heron.  It turned out it wasn't a Heron, but one of the Ospreys carrying a metre long stick which was quickly built into the nest.

A bit more on Drongos on the corner

 There seems to be enough interesting material about Spangled Drongos (hereafter 'Drongo') in the SE Corner (essentially East Gippsland (VIC) and Bega Valley (NSW) to merit a small research post. 

The most recent qualitative snippets are Facebook comments: 

1. from a reliable (visiting) birder saying that he "may" have heard and seen a Drongo near the Mallacoota Log Cabins in March this year.  This makes it seem as though they may be close to year round residents or possibly even breeding in the area.  (The birds seen at Karbeethong in 2023 were assessed as young birds and their presence at that time explained as post fledging dispersal.)
2. from a local resident including a photo from May, clearly showing a Drongo.  This is the most common month for Drongo reports in Mallacoota, 

Bega Valley Shire

I have eBird data from Bega Valley up to August 2023: that contains only 4 records of Drongos.  I believe all off those records have been copied to the Birdata data set and are covered in the attached snip from the  Birdata website, using a custom polygon. 

Note that the dots on the map are the points for a 10 minute grid cell not the precise point coordinates - zooming in shows for example that dot near Wyndham at the Southern end is actually quite a bit lower, and North East of that village.  The gap between Central Tilba and Broulee is "interesting".

Looking at the bar chart shows that there have been 21 sightings of Drongos in that area (which includes - by accident- a little of Eurobodalla Shire) since 2001.  

East Gippsland Shire

There are 41 eBird records for East Gippsland Shire of which 19 are in the Mallacoota District.  The patterns by year are rather different for Mallacoota and the rest of East Gippsland.

The pattern reminds me of Striated Heron which was commonly reported in about 2014 then not seen again until 2021, was common for 2 years but now become hard to find again.  Perhaps an occasional bird or two ends up in the area but fails to establish a viable population?

The monthly pattern in the Shire for Drongos still suggests post breeding dispersion.  (The November and December sightings were in the Gippsland Lakes sub-region in 2008 and 2020.)

SE Corner Maps

Two maps of records from eBird.  The first covers the SE corner as a whole. an shows large gaps either side of the Mallacoota District.  Although the birds are far from common I would have thought there was enough birding activity in the country from Eden to Moruya to have spotted at least one bird as they moved through !

The small scale obscures the detail for the Mallacoota District which shows the birds restricted to an area from the Coast along the shores of the Inlet to the Narrows.

Yes Virginia, there is a Spangled Drongo!

 I reported yesterday (4 July) on a frustrating failure of a search to relocate a Spangled Drongo reported on Facebook near the Log Cabins (point 1 in the map below).  

That became even more frustrating with another report of a Drongo hawking on Lakeside Drive (point 2) almost immediately below our house (point 3).   This was a few days earlier.

On 5 July we played croquet at the Mallacoota Golf Club (point 4) and throughout the game (an hour) could hear a call, identical to the second call of a Spangled Drongo on the Pizzey and Knight ios app, coming from the bush alongside the driving range (aka the old soccer field).  

After our game we walked over towards the source of the calls looking for a hawking bird.  This was not successful, and the calls had ceased.  So I played the set of calls in the Pizzey and Knight app on my iPhone to which I got responses from firstly a New Holland Honeyeater and secondly an inquisitive Spangled Drongo.  The Drongo didn't hang around but it was an all dark bird, larger than a Common Blackbird but smaller - and slimmer - than a male Satin Bowerbird.  Also, the call heard constantly was definitely that of a Drongo.  Tick!!!!

A misfiring twitch

 There is frequently some confusion about the origin of the term "twitch".  It refers to following up a sighting of a rare bird, ticking it on a list of some description (typically a personal life-list) and then departing without studying the bird further.  Usually such a follow-up involves some effort (recently exemplified by people who travelled from Sydney - or possibly further - to see an American Golden Plover at the Borrow Pits in the Werribee WTP) and often at some cost.  

According to Mark Cocker on p52 of  "Birders: Tales of a Tribe", which I take as authoritative, the term  arose due to a pair of British birders who travelled to see unusual birds on a Matchless 350 motor bike.  The guy on the pillion became very cold on Winter trips and would shiver uncontrollably - ie he twitched - on getting off the bike.

My attempt at a twitch today was a very mild example.  Following up on a sighting (with photograph) of a Spangled Drongo I drove from home to the Log Cabins on Rasmus St: a trek of 3.8 kms according to Google Maps.

Once there I wandered over 1.85 km for 51 minutes as logged by eBird.

I spotted a male King Parrot perched high in a dead tree.

As I was leaving, without seeing the Drongo, I watched a female King Parrot mumching some Pittosporum berries

I then took a punt on the bird having decided that the campground might have some nice perches from which to harass insects so did a lap of the Shire Caravan Park.  No Drongos were seen, but a squad of Satin Bowerbirds were a pleasant sighting.

I then went to Kabeethong where a drongo has been seen a few times in the past.  The Narrows Car park produced the usual Nankeen Night-Heron ...

.... but no Drongo.

VERY Annoying update!  A reliable local observer has just posted a comment saying that, a couple of days ago, he saw a Drongo hawking at the bottom of the paddock below our house!