Seabirds

 As the water level had dropped significantly by 14 May I went to Captain Stevenson's Point to check for White-fronted Tern or Red Knot on any sand bars that had emerged. There were good expanses of sand in Develings Inlet but neither of the target species were evident.

A squad of 10 White-faced Herons, 3 Cattle Egrets and 1 Little Egret were of interest. The most interesting sighting however was 3 Immature Pacific Gulls which allowed themselves to be digiscoped among the ~300 Crested Terns.

Following a strong storm affecting Far East Gippsland (11-12 May, dumping ~80mm of rain at Mallacoota) a beach-washed dead bird was found on Davis Beach -37.5794 149.7481 on 13 May.

Photographs were posted to Mallacoota Birds FB group and the bird identified as a Light-mantled Sooty Albatross. I visited the site on 14 May and photographed the corpse,

I shifted it up to the vegetation line so it didn't get washed out by a high tide. I didn't have a facility to freeze such a large specimen (note size relative to foot!) but following discussion with the National Wildlife Collection retrieved the corpse late that day for deposit in the collection (CSIRO Canberra). It felt quite strange walking along a totally dark beach carrying a bag full of dead bird!

NOTE it is quite legal to collect a specimen for scientific research by an authorised body.

Bird of the Week: White-fronted Tern

Betka Beach April 2021

I chose this bird as a result of having recently seen one (illustrated above) at Betka Beach.  Since I had also seen one at Betka and near the Mouth in May 2019 I believed them to be quite common in the area.  The next image shows the Mouth bird, highlighting some salient features:

Bastion Beach May 2019

The green arrow indicates it has longer legs than the Corgi  (thanks Wendy) Arctic Tern.  The red arrow shows the black carpal bar and the blue indicates scalloping (ruling out Common Tern).

In terms of plumages the plate by Jeff Davies in "The Australian bird guide" Menkhorst et al is an excellent reference.  I thank Jeff for permission to use this scan here - I hope I haven't lost too much quality in the process.

The records in eBird show 'common' not to be the case with only 10 Mallacoota District records since 2013 (or in fact since 2016).  Extending the scope to East Gippsland only generates another 9 records since 2014 (plus 1 record for August 2013).  Birdata has 26 records for East Gippsland, of which 10 are for 2011 or earlier.

But despite this relative rarity I will persevere with the species since it gives an opportunity to illustrate a number of interesting points.  A first point is that with a relatively uncommon species combining eBird and Birdata records gives a more useful pool of information to work with.  (I don't believe that any of the records are duplicated in the sense of an observation being copied in both datasets.  It is of course likely that different surveys have included the same bird, but that level of duplication is evident within the two data sets anyway.)

The following chart shows the total records (combining Birdata and eBird) for East Gippsland since 2016.

Although I have a record for 2021 I haven't included it above since the season of sightings only really starts in May, as illustrated in the following chart for East Gippsland combining eBird and Birdata records.  (Note that this month chart includes Birdata records prior to 2016 and eBird records for August 2013 and  April 2021)

The seasonal pattern is the second interesting point in that the species breeds in New Zealand and some migrate to Australian in Winter.  The first map shows the eBird gridcells for November to March ...

.. and the second from May to September.

Other terns in this size range (notably Arctic and Common Terns) migrate North-South.  There are a few other bird species which move East West across the ditch.  The commonest example of this is the Double-banded Plover, common on our sandbars from April to September.  Other species I have noticed with the East-West pattern are Hutton's and Fluttering Shearwaters: perhaps there are others, which have not drawn themselves to my attention.

My third interesting feature is the relative sizes of Tern species.  When I saw the bird photographed as the header it was very clear that it was a lot smaller than the horde of Crested Terns around it.  (It was very similar in size to the Arctic Tern about 5 m away, but the White-fronted had legs 😁.) This next chart uses the weight ranges in the Australian Bird Guide to illustrate how the Terns fall into size ranges - Whiskered Tern sort-of bridges the small-medium boundary but looks small in the flesh.

The next image shows the White-fronted Tern compared with Crested Tern and Silver Gulls.

Betka Beach May 2019

After 2 weeks trying to relocate the White-fronted Tern - with them being reported several times by other observers - I finally managed to track one down at the mouth, looking from Captain Stephenson's Point.  It positioned itself nicely with Crested Terns and a Little Tern for comparison.

So my starting point with tern ID now is to check the size relative to something else nearby (if possible).  Caspian Tern is easy: huge (and with a red traffic light stuck on the front of its head);  Crested and and Gull-billed are large and bill colour sorts them out,  That leaves the medium and little groups: its beyond my pay scale to advise on how to split them within the two groups.  Take

• photographs (as many as possible); and 
• good field notes focusing on leg length and colour shape of the head, bill colour, and extent of mottling on the wing feathers 

 which should enable the species to be sorted by reference to reference works and helpful experts.

A somewhat drier and bird-enhanced day

 It was still bucketing down at 0700 ...

... so we deferred our walk for a while.  By about 0830 it has calmed down so we donned the rain gear and took off.  There was a fair amount of water around.  This was running out of the gully on the opposite side of Angophora Drive to our place.

It went under Lakeside Drive and into Bottom Lake.

Someone's drain was running well!

Goodbye to the Jetty for a while.  The level of the Inlet at the official gauge is 90cm (up from 30 cm a couple of days ago).

The Lagoon boardwalk is managing to stay above the fray at present.

Lakeside Drive past Broome St is getting a bit damp.  This is unusual with the Mouth completely open.

A little later in the day I went out, so that people didn't start calling me a wimp, or otherwise dissing my manliness.  First stop was the wharf to check the gauge.  The parking lot is under threat!

Then to Captain Stevenson's Point to check for terns on the sandbars.  Neither terns nor sandbars were available.

It is a tad difficult to pick the mouth due to the height of the water this was about high tide.  My estimate was that it was at least 100 m wide and running very strongly.

On to Betka which was open again and running very well

I tried a seawatch at Fisherman's Point,but all the pelagic birds were well out to sea  so I didn't stay long.  I decided to drive the Gun Club Track, realising that it was going to be a bit slippery due to the rain.  There was a lot of water running down the road and the track along the fence was in deed greasy.  However, that ceased to be a concern when a female Flame Robin moved along the fence in front of me.  A strong contender for Bird of the Day.

I then saw what might have been a male Flame Robin on the wooden fence around the yellow phallic object,  It was too distant for my binoculars to resolve so I got out my telescope.  By the time I had that set the bird had gone so I scanned the heath  and found a Tawny-crowned Honeyeater.

That took over as Bird of the Day, as I am hopeful of seeing a Flame on the way to Canberra.

In the afternoon we went for a walk to the beach at Bastion Point.  It was very well endowed with foam.

Out at the Mouth small plovers were scuttling around in the clumps of foam.  They were doing a good impersonation of Sanderlings, but I couldn't persuade myself .....  The next images are of a Double-banded Plover.

This one is a well coloured Red-capped Plover

Bothe these species were in numbers on the inside of the Mouth, where the water was very high.

While no sandbars were visible it was clear that the water was  only shallow where the flock of Royal Spoonbills (usually seen at the Broome St Lagoon) was standing.

At that point Frances asked "What sort of Egret is that?".  It took me a couple of goes to get on to the bird - a bit surprising as it was only about 40 metres away - but then it was clearly not a Cattle or Great Egret.  The colour of the bill made it clearly a Little Egret (confirming that it wasn't just a small egret). 

A size comparison with Bar-tailed Godwits.

A view of the Mouth with attendant Pelicans and Cormorants. 

As I have never recorded a Little Egret at Mallacoota (and only ticked them a couple of times anywhere) that became bird of the day. It is strange how occasionally the uncommon birds turn up in numbers - must be something to do with the weather.

Not foggy, WET

 Today dawned ... sort of,  with rain falling.    It had started just before 2300 hrs on 10 May and is still coming down at 1500 hrs on 11 May.

I had initially been very dubious of the forecasts of 40 - 80mm but the total is currently 47mm at home, with 33mm at the Airport and an even 50 mm on Gabo Island.

A retired (OK, I don't think he gets paid for it now) meteorologist commented on the morning of May 10:

"All those models have a deep upper low crossing the far W VIC coast in the next few hours after which it slowly moves into SE NSW by midday tomorrow. At that point it gets caught in a lull in the jetstream and becomes nearly stationary until Thursday after which models diverge, but all have it wandering aimlessly around eastern NSW until late Thursday/early Friday before a strengthening jet steers it off into the Tasman. In the lower atmosphere this brings a trough with embedded lows through Bass Strait today with a low sitting on the NSW SC tomorrow. That directs an airstream that is very moist (>90% RH) and very deep (all the way to above 300hPa) directly onto the E Gippsland coast, combining topographic uplift, instability and deep moisture.

So not surprising theta the view from my window has looked this (or worse) for the day so  far.

The tank has got a good top up!

This isn't too clear an image but it is rare to see so many whitecaps on the Inlet.  Not a good day to go for a paddle in the kayaks!

Not a good day to go for a pelagic outing either (unless in something the size to HMAS Choules)!

I went to Betka looking for exotic terns and there were none.  The mouth of that River was closed the previous day but the waves were breaking over it.  So I expect that with pressure frm both sides it will be open again any time from now.

The radars have been interesting with Mallacoota right on the edge of the 256 km beam from Bairnsdale  ...

and Canberra.

The app on my phone brings them both together but doesn't do a very good job of plugging the gap

By 2000 hrs everything seems to have calmed down with my gauge totaling 60 mm for the day and 61.8 for the event so far (Airport 45.8 mm and Gabo 56.2mm).  Bombala AWS scored 43.4 mm for the day so there will be a good lot coming down the Genoa River in a day or two.  

A further squall came through later in the evening putting the day up to 62.2 at home..

Foggy, foggy days

The words "Foggy, foggy" are musically followed by 'dew' as in this example by Marty Robins.  ( I tried to find some English/Irish examples but they all seem to be a Benjamin Britten reworking or a very different song about the Easter Uprising).

However what this post is about follows my noticing how most days recently seem to start with fog in the valleys visible from my window.  That made me wonder about the seasonality of fog.  The best measure I could come up with is high (>90%) outside humidity.   So I calculated the number of hourly humidity readings >90% as a percentage of total humidity readings for each month, as recorded by my Weather Station.  A chart of the result follows.

Nothing too surprising in the way of a monthly pattern there!  However it did cause me to wonder how the pattern related to wind strength, so I calculated the average hourly wind run for each month.  The result was hard to compare with the humidity as the numbers were smaller, so I created an indicator by multiplying the wind run by 3 (which doesn't alter the pattern between months).

While the R2 coefficients aren't huge, they suggest the patterns are largely opposites: higher wind, lower humidity.  That sort of makes sense in that the wind mixes up the air, but on the other hand goes against the strong winds being related to the passage of fronts or passing storms.