Bats 2023

 A couple of weeks ago (written on 19 February) I noticed for the first time this year a few Grey-headed Flying Foxes in the forest in Mullet Creek.  I estimated perhaps 200.  Yesterday, for the first time I could smell them and hear them, hanging in trees almost out to Karbeethong Avenue.  My estimate was well over 1,000 (at least).

This evening at 2030 hrs I looked out from our lounge to the SW, as a tree was silhouetted against the red sky.  To my surprise, as I had checked for flyout across the Inlet and there had been none.  There was a stream of bats heading towards the town centre, where I know there are flowering gums.  Here are a few photos.

The flyout seemed to die down after about 5 minutes, and by 2045 it was pitch dark.  The image below shows the direction of flight with a yellow arrow, and the approximate position of our house with a red arrow.

I have looked back into history through my blog and it seems the biggest year was 2018 with some posts from March 22-24.  One of the images in that series shows the hillside towards the Howe looking white, with Bloodwood blossom.  That flowering has not been evident this year (so far - it's still only mid February).

After I was away for a couple of days we checked the scene again, looking more or less continually from 2005 hours.  The first bats appeared in the sky about 2013 and they had all moved out of sight by 2020.  

This was taken at 20:18:40 and shows the peak.  Click on image to see the full number of bat-specks.  I haven't tried to count them.

Apart from being a nice snip of the night sky. the lower pink band gives a reference for the height of the flock (if that is the right word).

Some of them were quite high.

My impression is that they were mainly going towards Captains Creek, rather than the Town Centre. A relatively small proportion were heading across Bottom Lake towards Fairview.

Birds of the Airport and nearby

 On a Sunday morning I often go for a drive around most of the way around the airport.  Sometimes this can be brilliant, at others hopeless - I have spent 40 minutes there, with another birder, and not seen a single winged thing!

Today was about average.  The route is illustrated here.

At point 1 life got a little interesting with a flock of Little Ravens.  I got the count up to 38 birds (a tad difficult to be precise as they were quite active, but there were at least that many).  As well as the large flock size the "cut-off" call was very evident.

An immature Spotted Harrier (thanks to 2 Facebook followers for that ID from following photographs) took off from the heathy area.

It then perched on a fence post at site 2 with 2 Ravens for size comparison.

A portrait.

A short flight, quartering the ground (Harrier Pottering is the official joke)  and it perched obligingly at point 3.  This gives a reasonable impression of the owlish facial appearance.

After a brief prowl in the grounds of the Bunker (4 Gang-gangs, yay) I called in at Betka Beach to check on the Hoodies.  The water is still rising but it looks as though they are still incubating.  (The sitting bird is in front of the mounds of vegetation.)

Jones Creek Road (ish)

 These snaps come from a drive with Jeff along Jones Creek Road and related carriageways North of the Prince Highway a few km West of Genoa.  Some words and precise names to follow.

As we drove Jeff had mentioned seeing some monstrous spotty March Flies.  As soon as we stopped some rolled up.  Here is one trying to drill through Jeff's boot.  According to iNaturalist AI the species is Triclista gluttata.

At our next stop there were hordes of butterflies - Imperial Hairstreak Jalmenus evgoras - fluttering around the low shrubs.  Many of them were a tad battered, but this one shows the tails nicely.

This one shows a clump of pupae as well as several imagos. Some of the attendant ants are also there.

Geitoneura klugii - Marbled Xenica

A Skipper of some species.  According to the AI, Splendid Skipper Trapezites symmomus

A nice Goanna - about 1.2 m long.  Jeff commented that nearly all the Goannas around this are are about this size: perhaps they are all from nests that survived the fire, and the bigger adults mostly were killed?  Note the tongue in this first image.

As well as enjoying the colours, check the size of the claws!

We had three target species of which the Turquoise Parrot was obliging.

After that first (Julian Alps-rule: even if a photo-op isn't "perfect" grab in case the opportunity is about to vanish, as happened when we camped at Bled and the chocolate-box lid view was soon replaced by 8/8 cloud) image we followed a sandy track to get a clearer image.  Going against all the rules the bird was still in position when we shifted to get a better view.

January Weather Report

 In summary fairly damp and cool: Summer appears to be very sporadic.

Rain

The total rain recorded (73mm) was well above the median for January, but a little below 2022

On looking at these data I was intrigued to see that January has the lowest median rainfall, which is a tad hard to pick out in calendar year data, so I charted median and mean rainfall x month for a year ended 30 June.

I was further surprised to note the high mean rainfall in June and April.  This seems to be due to those months having a relatively high proportion of incidences of falls >200mm: of 28 such falls 5 are in June and 6 in April. (Why there are relatively many days of high rainfall in those months is above my pay scale.)

Non-trivial rainfall occurred on 11 days of the month, mostly as a moderate rate.  The exception was on the 3rd, when the maximum rate was 147 mm/hr.

By the end of the month my pro-rata estimate of likely annual rainfall was 1,054 mm which is (as would be expected) somewhat above average.

Temperatures

Overall the difference between the month's average temperature an the long term mean January temperature was -0.91C.  So rather cool.  Compared to previous patterns we had an excess of days with below average minima and maxima.

The daily extremes from my weather station (WS) are shown in the attached chart together with long term averages for the date.  The maximum of 16.3C on 4 January was the lowest January maximum recorded (after making adjustments to calibrate past BoM data with my WS).  Checking the BoM data for Mallacoota the 4th was very slightly above the lowest ever January maximum: either way it was cold!

Minimum temperatures

The average minimum temperature for the month was 16.34C, above average but well below the value for 2022.

The highest minimum recorded in the month was 21.3C on the 14th.  This was equal 20th ran: the all January high minimum was 24C in 2018.

The time series of average minima shows an upward trend but with so much variability from month to month the trend is not significant.

I have developed a concept of Cold Snap (the equivalent of a Heat Wave) which is three consecutive days in which both maximum and minimum are significantly below average.  There were no days which matched those criteria during this month. Three days minima were significantly below average (2 of which also had low maxima) but not 3 in a row.

Maximum temperatures

Note that the following discussion is based on a series where I have adjusted the BoM Airport data to compensate for the effect of cooling sea breezes there.  Conspiracy theorists: please enjoy.)  

To quote from the late 1960s, this month was  "Way cool, man."  Only one January (2000 with 23.1c) has a lower average maximum temperature than this one (23.46C).  I have discussed the lowest daily maximum above.  

The highest temperature recorded in the month was 31.7C on the 28th: the only day above 30C: on average there are 5 days above 30 in January with 2006 being a stinker: 12 days that hot.  The only previous month with less than 2 days over 30 was 2000 - as noted above the month with the lowest average maximum.

The time series for maxima shows how the average maximum has fallen off a cliff since 2020: I assume this is an effect of the cloudiness associated with La Nina.

Not surprisingly in view of the low average maximum there were no heat waves in this period.

Humidity

The month was noticeably humid.  As shown below the afternoon reading was very close to, or above, the morning reading on many occasions.

This led me to compare the last month with hourly humidity readings for the previous 3 Januaries (since I fired up my WS in February 2019).  The average humidity was higher in the last month for every hourly reading.

For the two standard times the last two years have been quite similar and both well above the two earlier years (and the average).

Wind

A fairly draughty period in the middle of the month followed by gradually decreasing windruns towards the end.  The longest run - 263 kms on te 14th - was the 7th longest January run (but only the the 57th longest run looking at all months. 

Windruns for January have been quite similar for the 4 years which I have record.