The Betka lets rip .. eventually

This post will end up with the Betka River self isolating but begins with what has led to that situation, which is rain.  Over the night of 23-24 June we got a surprising dump of rain.  There have been a number of reports to the Facebook pages suggesting that this was due to squalls passing on the Western edge of the town.  I come to that conclusion, in part based on the BoM airport getting 38 mm, home 28 mm and BoM Gabo Island 5 mm.

The pattern of falls over the night is shown in this chart of cumulative falls.

The squally nature is shown by considering the amount and rate of rainfall at my site over the 8 hours .  Note the different scales.

I had noted the previous day that the Betka River was on the brim.  So I went down at 0800 to check the situation.  It was still on the brim.

Obviously waves had been breaking over during the night.

The walking track on the far side of the road was well flooded.  It doesn't need an authoritarian sign from Parks or EGSC to say that.

On the way home the boardwalk on the Chip Track was still missing in action.

I also checked the gauge in the Inlet, mainly to get an impression of when the run off from the rain gets here.  It had risen a tad under 0.4 cm in the last week (say 390 Olympic Pools). 

There was a thought that the high tide mid-morning might cause a breakout, but the image at 1500 hrs says "No.".

However the tide was 0.3 m higher at 2230.  A community member visited at around that time and found it to be running well!   So I took myself down there at 0700.

Yesterday the water was lapping at the orange fence.

Looking back to the parking lot.

Some attractive rocks are exposed.

So are some former fish.  I saw a couple like this flopping around in small pools and flicked them into the River.  I hope to get an ID through iNaturalist.org but Bryce Watts-Parker has suggested Flathead Gudgeon

This is definitely an Eastern Sea Garfish (Hyporhamphus australis).

Later in the day, another former fish found tangled in the Eel grass washed out of the Estuary.  That one is a Silver Trevally.

Here is the Eel grass.

An exposed rock on the beach ...

And a close up showing the contrasting colours of the eel grass and the rock

The exposed mud in the River was attracting a lot of gulls and terns and 17 Bar-tailed Godwits.  Here are two of them.

As I got to the top of Angophora Drive in the morning, the sun was finding its way over the Howe Range.

Sights of the Bunker area

This morning(20 June)  I went out to the Bunker Museum for a bit of maintenance.  There were a few birds around so I had eBird running and it gave this track.  It is purely crazy to log that as traveling (1.28 km) so I used Google Earth to estimate the area as 0.68 Ha.

A bunch of leaves and twigs had been raked up and ignited.  Should be safe with about 10 SES folk around, honing their chainsaw skills.

When people have been exploring the bush after the fire they have found relics such as these components of the power supply to the accommodation area.  That is about 300 m from the bunker location.   Note the different styles of insulator - no idea why they are different.

In other cases a lower-tech approach was used to mounting the insulators.  It is interesting to contemplate these having been bolted into the tree for around 75 years!

Some modest size Allocasuarina littoralis were growing under the canopy.

This cone is begging a Glossy Black-cockatoo to come and munch it!

I was in the general are the next day and when over by the Gun Club saw a small bird hoping around in the base of some shrubs.  To my astonishment it turned out to be a Red-capped Robin: usually a bird of the dry inland.  Sorry about the quality of photo but the windscreen was dusty!

From the tinge of red on the breast I think this is an immature male bird,

That was so unusual we went back on the 22nd to walk the area and see if we could relocate it. We didn't despite "walking the walk".

However we got a tad excited when we found some Jacky Winters on the fence as we started off.

There was also a more exciting Tawny-crowned Honeyeater but it didn't pose.   This area is a known hotspot for that species but they have been absent since the fires.  That was unfortunately just about the end of the birds.  I totalled 5 species with the other excitement being hearing a pair of White-bellied Sea-Eagles quacking away, and eventually seeing one bird fly off towards the Betka River.

It would be an exaggeration to describe the area as carpeted with flowers but there were some.  A nice development given the area was mulched last year and then burnt!  This is Acacia suavolens.

The three colour forms of Epacris impressa were all present.

A few specimens of Euphrasia collina were seen.

I can't attach a name to the daisy, but liked the visiting, and cooperative Hoverfly.

Pimelia humilis

As we walked along the edge of the forest I was again surprised to see epicormic growth on the Allocasuarina littoralis.  As these trees are mature they will hopefiully develop some cones later in the year.

A little further along the woodland edge we found some trees of this species, about 3m high, which seemed to have escaped the fire completely.  Presumably the fire was fairly low intensity after crossing the mulched heath.

 

Travelling records in eBird

I was recently in a discussion with some folk from 2 Birdlife Australia (BLA) groups about the use of citizen science data to monitor the recovery of birds from the Black Summer fires.  I suggested that as well as the data contained in Birdata (which appeared to be biased towards the coastal areas) some thought could be given to supplementing this with data from eBird.  One participant - with a scientific thrust to his interests - has subsequently commented about having some doubts about the value of the data from the eBird 'Travelling' protocol.

To date I hadn't really focused on such an analysis,  Before the cries of "Shime, shime" become too loud I point out that my interest has been more to compile monthly checklists of species seen in a fairly large area.  Thus as long as it appears that (for example) the records were all within the Cape Howe Wilderness, which is completely within my study area, the fact that some of the lists were ~80 km doesn't fuss me.  (As an aside, given that some parts of this area would have been burnt and others weren't, the records in this checklist are not useful for a fire-impact study.)

 

Thus I thought I would have a look at the eBird data for East Gippsland Shire to assess how the data could be filtered to be useful.  By way of context up to 31/12/2019, eBird holds 222,739 species records for the shire. contained in 15,958 checklists.  A number of the checklists have been shared between members of groups which introduces some amount of duplication which might be important for some studies: using the group identifies code to eliminate this gives 13,199 groups.

In what follows I have mainly tallied species records, which is somewhat imprecise due to the duplication from sharing, but I think the overall picture is satisfactory for the purpose.  There are a number of protocols available within eBird (quite a few of which are not relevant to Australia.  This first chart shows the number of species records held against each protocol.

The red bars indicate protocols which IMHO can be directly mapped to a BLA protocol.  It is possible that the records from within a list compiled while stationary might include birds seen but outside a notional 2 Ha site (which could be [eg] a circle radius of ~80m, or a rectangle 200m x 100m) but I don't believe that to be a huge problem.  Note that if a route totals <10 km it must by definition fit within a 5 km radius.  Indeed, many of the routes with a length >10 km could fit within such a radius but I am being conservative.

In total I estimate there are at least 136,332 species records which meet those protocols.

Obviously, the larger the area the greater the diversity included within it.  Ebird advise that a new list should be started where habitat changes, but that is frankly going to be obeyed in the breach.  A citizen scientist (aka "birder") walking along a 4km track that includes 2 km of heath; 1.5 km of woodland and 0.5km of beach will not provide three lists whether using eBird or Birdata.  This second chart compares three lengths of walk in terms of the proportion of lists split to classes of number of species.  (An example may help: 68% of trips <0.5 km have 10 or less species: the equivalent % are 30% for 0.5 -5 km and 13% for 5-10 km.)

EBird recommendations are also to submit a new list if the distance travelled is greater than 8 km.  That is followed in most cases but there are 15,339 species records (7% of total records) on sheets covering >10 km.  I believe that to be simply part of the nature of birding - people want a simple life and don't want to stop and spend 5 minutes setting up a new site.   As noted earlier for my purposes that is quite OK but for analysts attempting a more structured approach they may wish to filter out these records.  

For curiosity I looked closely at the 14 checklists with a length of 50km or more.  10 of the lists reflected group outings so there are 8 'outings' covered by these lists.  

• 4 lists are by 2 groups of overseas birders (presumably more intent on building their world list than contributing to detailed science - been there, done that);
• 3 lists are a group of three birders (all reputable names) exploring the Cape Howe Wilderness (see preamble)
• 3 more lists are the first ever pelagic into the area off Gabo Island;
• the final 4 lists are simply people having a pleasant drive with birds!

It is difficult to see how these records could be incorporated in an analysis based on the standard BLA protocols.  However if the analysis was looking at "species of interest" it may well be of interest to include records of those species even if the area of occurrence is more generalised than desired..

Continuing the theme of analysis for "species of interest"  there would seem to be some merit in also including records for those species compiled using the incidentals protocol (and/or historical records).  By way of example records under the incidental protocol include 3 records each of Regent Honeyeater (5 records in total for East Gippsland) and Australasian Bittern (no other records for East Gippsland).

The June trip to TOPSY

Some time last year I discovered a track that goes from Genoa Rd to the entrance to the poo pits.  The Wednesday Walkers refer to this as the Track Opposite the Pony Club (TOPC, pronounced Topsy).  I have included this in the set of places I am visiting monthly to record changes since the fire.  My JUne visit was on the 16^th.

Here is the route (courtesy of eBird).  The little jags are where I left the track to check something.

The entrance to the track now looks wide and well-formed as a result of a bulldozer having gone down it.  If you have a bulldozer you have to take it places whether needed or not.

The first few 100 m go through a Xanthorrhoea heath (mainly X.resinosa) with Leptospermum upper storey.  The epicormic growth on the latter is developing strongly.

The heath eventually change to open sclerophyll woodland, which is accompanied by the ground layer changing to bracken (now - I can't remember what it was).  I have tried to illustrate this zone here, but the bracken doesn't show up too well. 

In places in the woodland the ground storey is more or less absent

I am used to epicormic growth on the Family Myrtaceae (Eucalypts, Leptospermum etc) but have been surprised to find it very evident on the Banksia serrata.

This image is included to show some of the few Xanthrrhoea australis, with trunks, mixed in with the heath.  (NB:  I have in the past referred to X. minor, but now think that to be a mistake as they haven't had the yellow petals of X m lutea, the subspecies found in this area.

A few flowers - of common species - were in the woodland area.  Brachyscome spathulata- much taller than those found in The Narrows.

Scaevola ramosissima 

Schelhamerra umbellata

Craspedia variabilis

Coronidium scorpioides

In contrast to our other recent walks there were few fungi around.  'twas good to renew my acquaintnce with Lichenomphalia chromacea (previously known as Omphalina chromacea).  The new name brings in the symbiosis with lichen while retaining the 'omphos +navel reference.

I think this is Laetiporus portentosus: although burnt, the host tree was still alive.

The area is one in which firewood collection is allowed and someone has been acting on that.

There is plenty of raw material for them!  In some cases the trees that have been felled have had a lot of green growth and the bole looks OK: perhaps bulldozers get grumpy if there is too long between knocking over trees?

I see the amount, and diversity, of growth as grounds for cautious optimism.  As long as the bulldozers are kept away.