Wedge-tailed-Eagles Pass by

Throughout today we have had a pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles passing in front of the house.  Although the wind light (a 21 km run from 1000 hrs to 1300 hrs) it must have been generating some nice lift as they hardly seemed to flap as they did laps, more or less on this route,.

I got a bit excited as they got this close but no spectacular display flight resulted.

A couple of reasonable depictions of the splayed primaries.

Yes, there was some blue sky as well!  The trees in the corner blocked our view of them circling, but I sure we would have heard the ruckus if they'd got affectionate!

More Beach stuff

Our Wednesday visit to the beach was so interesting we went back on Thursday!  Quite a few other people were on the beach including someone who had made this art work.

There seemed to be less "interesting" stuff around.  Whether that was because others had gleaned the area or the last high tide had covered material up is an open question.  We found no more Paper Nautilus but another beachcomber showed us one they had found.  There were some colourful Sea Tulips (possibly Pyura gibbosa).

The biggest bank of seaweed was about 1m high.

Moving over the bar to the Inlet was like crossing the dunes of Death Valley!  The trail behind vegetation shows which way the wind blows, as does the way the tussocks are bending.

The rest of this immature Australasian Gannet (Morus serrator scandiwegianensis) was firmly embedded in the pile of seaweed

A pair of Sooty Oystercatchers were exploring the weed.

So were a few small plovers.  A Red-capped at the top and a Double-banded lower down.

Out in the Inlet 2 Caspian Terns ...

.. were loafing with about 110 Crested Terns

The excitement was finding 2 Red Knot, which triggered a rare bird alert from eBird.  Fortunately they, and comments on Facebook, have confirmed the ID.

This shows their size in comparison to Bar-tailed Godwits

The sea was relatively clam but young persons were catching waves while maintaining social distancing as required in Victoriastan.

I really enjoyed watching this dog playing with its frisbee.

A comment had been made on Facebook that the level of the Betka River was over the footbridge on the Chip Track so on Friday we went to check it out.  Definitely a subaqua track.

There is still plenty of clearance for the road.

My guess is that there is still at least 25cm before the River breaks out naturally.  AS another commented on Facebook it needs another good rain event and a high tide.

Another view, closer to the cliffs.

Searching for traces of Captain Nemo

We have been to the beach quite a lot recently mainly to check on what has been washed up.  This post covers visits to Quarry beach on 26 May and Big Beach on the 27th.

At Quarry we noted the work going on on the steps of the walking track and passed on to the exposed cliff.

The rocks out towards the sea were more exposed than in the past: the sand has been removed, presumably heading towards the launching ramp.

This image, looking West shows how close to a metre of sand has gone.

The flock of Australian Pied Oystercatchers were trotting around.  There were 11 in total on the beach, of which 5 had bands.

Now move to the 27th!  Our aim was to do a longish walk as training for a walk to (or at least towards, Lake Barracouta in the Howe Flats.  At the foot of the steps a lot of washed up seaweed (Fucus sp.) was evident.

In one spot a shell bank was evident: mainly the common bivalves.

On our return the ebbing tide had revealed a lot of reef remnants that had been washed up close to the steps.

Out on the Big Beach it was clear that the strong surf of recent days had been washing right across the beach.  These 'tongues' of sand show that.  The depth of footprints shows that the sand is very soft, being freshly deposited.

There is nearly always at least one cargo vessel vessel visible out on the horizon.

These guys were setting up for fishing, apparently happy that they were going to battle through the weed into the salmon.  (On our return they had caught one decent sized fish.)

Another angler about 300m further along the beach had had success (from his view - the fish might argue about that word).

I am sure you have been wondering about the reference to Captain Nemo.  I am astonished that the Wikipedia article about "Finding Nemo" makes no reference to the character if the Jules Verne novel "20,000 Leagues under the sea".  Possibly fair enough as the wiki linked there makes to reference to the cartoon fish!  The key point is the name of the submarine "Nautilus".  The name is also given to a type of "shell" which a friend tld us was being washed up on the beach recently.  

I have used quotes as these are not shells in the sense of being part of a gastropod's structure but cases made by some species of octopus as receptacles for their eggs.  On this visit we soon found a small specimen.

A much larger, almost complete specimen was a little further down the beach.  (With a second small one.)  We also found some fragments, amounting to a total count of atr least 6 cases.

The next few images are of various lifeforms washed up in various spots.

This looks like a lurid tunicate.

No Giant Squid were encountered but a recently deceased octopus was found about 2 km along the beach.  Presumably the gulls or ravens will tidy it up.  The tentacles looked to be about 25 cms long (if straightened).

The eyes of the octopus.

Birds were not unduly evident other than Red-capped Plovers near the Mouth.

On the way back a White-bellied Sea Eagle was checking Harrison's Channel from a conveninet perch.

Mallacoota Weather event of 21- -25 May 2020

We had an unusual very damp spell from 21 May to 25 May.

It was mainly unusual because the dampness (90 mm to 100 mm around Mallacoota) seemed to be confined to quite a small area.  To our West, Orbost managed 37.4 mm and to the North, Merimbula had 1.2 mm and Bega 0 mm!  Of particular interest to Mallacoota was Bombala, at the head of the Genoa River catchment, scoring 3.8 mm: that won't do much to flush the Inlet.  From conversations with, and Facebook posts from, others in the area the amount of rain dropped off quickly with records of 55 to 70 mm from Gipsy Point and Wallagaraugh (only 13 km from the coast).

The first graph shows the rain in terms of the fall during each hour and the maximum rate during the hour.  The 5 boxes at the foot show the different days,    Note that the lines are on different scales: the chart shows the greater amounts of rain, at a very modest rate. on the 22nd/23rd with lesser amounts but at a relatively high rate on the other days.

The second chart shows wind speed as both average speed over an hour and maximum gust during the hour.  I have used a single scale in this chart to shown how, even with basically modest winds there can be quite high gusts.

The next chart uses the same data as the one above but plots on different axes.  The similarity of pattern between the 2 series is very obvious.

The next chart is rather tricky, and I wondered whether to include it.  

(Ignore this red bit if details of charts aren't your idea of heaven!) Plotting wind direction is always tricky since if compass degrees are used a small shift from North (0 degrees) to NNW (337.5 degrees) appears much larger than a shift from NNW to WSW (247.5 degrees) although the latter is a fair more significant shift.  To try to overcome this I have used an indicator based on the 16 quadrants of the compass with the count increasing by 1 as move East from North and decreasing by 1 as move West.  The same problem arises around South, but that is less commonly found.

What it shows is basically a steady flow from sector -5 (WSW) and -6 (SW) with occasionally records from sectors +5(ESE) and +6 (SE) particularly on the 24th and 25th.  Interestingly several of the Easterly switches coincide with the rainy squalls.

 

The final aspect of the weather is the average temperature for each hour.  After the event really kicks off late of the 21st the temperature is pretty stable, between ~10C and ~15C showing the insulating effect of clouds.

Sunday seas

I began the day by going to Betka Beach to see if the River has broken out yet. It hasn't, but the sea seems to be having a fair go at breaking in.

I don't think it was a good morning for a pelagic trip!

Nothing much else to see there so I moved along to Fisherman's Point where the lookout has been closed because the supports have been burnt away.  I had a discussion with a builder about using wood in this situation and he was of the view that metal supports would have been compromised by the fire so might as well use the cheaper option. 

I was able to get a couple of photos of the sea, and scan for seabirds.  None were available to be scanned.  As I looked at this sea I reflected on a photo of some ocean from last week where the poster opined it would be suicidal to go in for a swim with that swell running.  The difference here is that I think it would be suicidal to go in for a swim in just about ant sea conditions.

In the afternoon we thought the weather was good enough to go for a stroll on Bastion Beach.  It was low tide so the breakers were a fair way out.  It was obvious that the waves had been breaking into the Inlet at the end of the vegetation.  This charred yukk had been washed around and a channel eroded into the Inlet: it has a lot of work to do to to create a permanent break - or even a semi-permanent break.  Another few days like yesterdat might give the sea an assist from inside.

There were still quite a few waders around including some Bar-tailed Godwits

Shortly after taking that photo the weather turned very nasty so we came home.

Being quite impressed by the size of the waves I checked the BoM wave height forecast.  We are in the 3 metre zone, which was quite impressive.

I had been hearing on the TV news about the massive storm due to hit WA in the next few days so had a look at the wave forecast for there.  That purple blob is 10+ metres, so more than 3 times the size of our waves.  Given that the WA Coast  is also prone to King waves it should be very exciting there on Monday.