November's random photos

This post will be updated from time to time with photos and/or smart-arse remarks that appeal to me and do not fit within more general themes.  The first set of images cover events on 1^st and 2^nd November.

We headed towards Eden to replenish household supplies.  Our first stop was at the Gipsy Point cemetery to see how the orchids were going.  The Thelymitra ixioides were all fertilised and thus finished.  However there were many smaller sun orchids.  I decided that these were T. arenaria.

On getting to (Greater) Eden we swung in to Quarantine Bay expecting to see a roost of black and white cormorants which we have seen in the distance from the wharf.  In fact that was not the case as shown by this snip from Google Maps.  The birds seem to be on the Eastern side of Cocora Point (our viewpoint shown by red arrow) and thus invisible from the place we were (shown by red box).

We did see a cruise ship.  This is the Caledonian Sky - I think on a "cruise" from Melbourne.  

It appears that punters take short trips to spend a few days at sea.  From the appearance of the obvious tourists wandering about the Eden Wharf area I can't imagine what they do on board as they

• didn't look like the "party 'til you puke" types. and 
• ignored the juvenile Pacific Gull so aren't birders.

I found it rather difficult to find out much about this vessel or others serving the port.  Plenty of sites willing to sell tickets but little about the boats or how the day is filled on the cruises.  It appeared that a boat was due on about 50 days before the end of March so the new wharf is getting plenty of action: but I also can't see what people do in Eden for about 9 hours!

Here is the view at Quarantine Bay.  Much guano evident on the rocks but no unusual Cormorants.

 After a nice serve of fish and chips we walked along the wharf where a Pacific Gull was evident.

 Looking out in the usual direction some Pied Cormorants were visible at the end of telescope range.  We agreed that we'll have to explore that part of Eden at a later time.

On Saturday morning on our early walk (I still think of it as our dog walk) we were surprised at the number of Sea Hares around the board walk.  They included this Sydney Sea Hare (Aplysia sydneyensis) as well as at least 5 Walking Sea Hares (A. juliana).

 I went for a stroll around the Double Creek Nature Trail, where I failed to find any interestin g birds but did remember to photograph this useful sign.

 Coming back a bit the Xanthorrhoea resinosa was in good bloom.

 My eye was caught by a flamboyant insect which I have tentatively identified as Cryptocheilus bicolor (Orange Spider wasp).

On 9 Nov I noticed a bunch of white birds on Seagull Island.  I wondered if there were any Cattle Egrets there and identified 1, much whiter than most of the flock currently around the area.  There were a good lot of Royal Spoonbills.  Looking at the full sized image allowed to sort out what was a Spoonbill and what was a snoozing Pelican (or Ibis) giving a count of 14.

 On the morning of the 10^th, 10 of them were wading in the Lakeside Lagoon,

 These 3 were showing their plumes rather well.

In the afternoon we went to the Miners Track area and found the orchids were largely cactus.  This Diplarrena moroea (Buttercup Flag) was looking good.

 So was was this Varied Sword-grass Brown (Tisiphone abeona)

When the team from Birdlife East Gippsland visited here they found two Powerful Owls on the Casuarina Track.  I visited the track several times that week and more since with no success.  On the 22^nd Frances and I went again.  A first good sighting was a Rufous Fantail in the deeper gully.  After crossing the second gully a Wattlebird ruckus could be heard as we approached a bench.  They obviously had a target in the bush and on going a little off track there was my target

A useful drop!

When I woke up this morning I was surprised to find we had had 2.2 mm of rain as I had heard nothing while in the Land of Nod.

Then I looked at the radar and it looked as though that was our lot for the day.  and I thought the BoM 'range of 6-20 mm was ridiculously high.  However by 1130 matters were looking a little damper to our West.  Perhaps .....

 As I was driving around at about 1245 I had to have the wipers on the intermittent setting. Maybe ....

By 1402 the radar was looking a little serious about matters.

A few minutes after snipping that, there were a few loud rumbles and then the rain started.  By 1423 we have scored another 16.4 mm.  According to my Weather Station it was coming down at a maximum of 198.6 mm/hr which is very heavy.  The Inlet had vanished from view.

Our gutters gave up the struggle, with quite a large surface area trying to go through a 100 mm pipe a bit of back up occurred and thus some overflowing.  A frog had been resident in said pipe and was duly ejected.

There were also a few leaves in the pipes that had caused the filter to get partially blocked and spill on to the garden.

Looking at the image of the frog the enlarged toe-pads say "tree-frog" and the cross shaped pupil adds "Peron's" (Litoria peronii).

In case you wonder why a frog was named after an Argentinian President - it wasn't.  It was named after a French naturalist Francois Peron.

Thinking of French gives a lead-in "Apres la deluge ..." I though the frog was lurking in the filter so went to get a closer photo (and scoop the leaves etc out of the filter).  It was a frog but a former House Sparrow which I suspect had died in the gutter and been washed down (which might also have contributed to the backing up).

By 1450 that lot was over  with the day to date running at 21 mm (so the BoM 25% estimate was conservative). In fact for the period from 1400 hrs the BoM - via Meteye - offered a 10% chance of more that 10mm and looking at the probabilities through EXCEL I would guess that the fall we got had a probability of less than 15%.

This has got us in front of last year and the pro-rata estimate for the year at exactly 600 mm.  Gentle rain is continuing,

October 2019 Weather Report

Overall the month was about on average for mean temperature and 15% below median rainfall.  Humidity was higher in the morning but lower in the afternoons.  It was less windy than past data would suggest and the wind came more from the East than has been the case in past months.

Rain

I recorded 50.2 mm for the month (BoM: Mallacoota 52 mm; Gabo Island 40.4). As noted above this is below the median for October but well above October 2018.

Longer term rainfall analysis

Using a pro-rata method to estimate the possible annual rainfall given falls to the end of the month comes up with a result of 578 mm - a slight improvement on the situation at the start of the month.  

Someone recently mention a 3 year drought so I have examined the situation using rolling averages for 12, 24 and 36 months.  That is summarised in the following chart.

This shows the local peak of the 36 month series as October 2016 - exactly 3 years ago!  The 12 month series shows a period of decline starting in April 2015. 

The longest period of decline in the 12 month series is from 1989 to 1995 - close to 6 years!  I hope we don't break that record. The 12 months from June 1994 to May 1995 average 45 mm per month: other months in 1994 - 95 have more rain bring the calendar year averages up to more healthy levels.

Temperatures

My overall summary of the temperature is the difference between the mean temperature for the month and its long term equivalent (in both cases using BoM data for Mallacoota).  For October that ended up at +0.04^oC - effectively at the average.  The development of that anomaly through the month shows an early period of warmth, cool through most of the month and a warm sting in the tail.

Looking at the relationship of the daily extremes to the average values for that data shows the most frequent situation was for both measures to be below average.

Another way of showing the temperatures is the daily temperatures recorded on my weather station on Angophora Drive.

 On looking at that chart I was struck by the range of temperatures on some days and the day to day  variation in the range.  I charted that together with average range for the date and the values for 2018.

Eyeballing that graph it appears that the ranges seen had some unusually high values and the level of variability was higher than most years.

Maximum temperatures

The highest maximum recorded was 34.9^oC on the 31^st.  The monthly average maximum was 19.9^oC.  This is above average, but a little cooler last year.

The series since 1993 does not show a significant linear trend.

Minimum temperatures

The lowest minimum for the moth was 5.4^oC on the 13^th.  The monthly average minimum was 9.8^oC..  This is slightly below average and last year.

Again no significant linear trend in the series.

Humidity

The morning and afternoon values are generally quite similar with few morning fogs and some quite low values towards the end of the month.

The morning value is higher than last year and the history shown by BoM while the opposite is the case for the afternoon value.

Wind

Although it appeared to be quite a windy month records from my WS do not confirm that.  (The BoM has several days missing for their only indicator (maximum gust) for Mallacoota so is even less helpful than usual for wind!)  In addition the windrun was lower for October than for September, which goes against the few snippets of past data available from BoM.

As there was a disjoint between my expectation and the observations I looked at two measures of "windiness" and the pattern is broadly similar (correlation coefficient 0.64) so conclude that my WS is not failing.

Possibly the most surprising observation for the month is a relatively high (22%) of hourly wind records coming from the ESE.  

Looking at previous WS records it seems that this increase in winds from ESE is balanced by a decrease in those from the NNW and N directions.  As the WS has not changed position (nor has the wind vane been interfered with) I can only assume this is a seasonal shift.

A phew interesting fotos

There have been a few interesting sightings recently on days that haven't deserved a full blogpost.  They have been put on Facebook, but I realise people may not wish to further enrich Mark Zuckerberg or have other objections to that platform.

I'll begin on our morning walk.  That goes on a boardwalk adjacent to Bottom Lake.  On a few recent occasions we have seen a Sea Hare.  I am calling it Aplysia sydneyensis but am not very confident of that.  The first image is a generic "grazing" shot.

This one is included as it shows the shallowness of the water, with the animal's back breaking the surface.

In the afternoon we went to the Waste Water Treatment Plant looking for any Terns that may have decided to visit.  None had, but there were ducklings.  These baby Shelduck were the first brood to be reported to eBird in Mallacoota.  There are only 3 other broods in eBird for the whole of East Gippsland.

 The image of Pacific Black Ducklings was less successful

 Moving on to the cliff tops we have looked at some bushes with velvety leaves for months wondering what they were.  The flowers have now emerged and identification as Lasiopetalum macrophyllum seem more assured.

Down at ground level the cliff top walk is the area for Spider Orchids (which I think are sensibly regarded as a good genus Arachnorchis.  Putting these in the same genus as the finger orchids of Caladenia suggests that some DNA-sequencing taxonomists need their dosage adjusted.

The first ones we had found seemed to be quite large and I had called them A(C). tentaculata.  I then heard that a local guru called them A(C) parva.   The differences seem to be 2:

1. Size of plant;
2. Whether the flower is upright or tilted back 

They seem to be rather 'nice' distinctions, especially given the lumping to genus.  In this case the first clump we found were really low to the ground: stems perhaps 10 cm.  The flowers looked vertical to me.  So I give these a tick as Caladenia parva.

 A little distance away were some much taller plants - stems 20 cm - and the flower looked to be tilted back (see second image below).  So I give Caladenia tentaculata a tick also.

For the past several weeks I have been intrigued by some growths in our lawn (and several others in our street).

I had thought they looked like Microtis leaves, but couldn't envisage such a forest of orchids.  Lawn mowers had intervened to stop flowers emerging.  Emergence as finally (20 October) happened.  They are Microtis sp.

On my way to the Bunker on the 20th I stopped, as always, to check the cormorants near the Betka bridge.  Nothing exciting in the cormorants but a Whiskered Tern was perched nearby.  I was able to get a better photo than the previous bird of this species (about 5 times the distance in the main Inlet).

We went to Bastion Point close to low tide on 27 October.  The water level seemed higher than we expected from the tide forecast but this wormcast/barnacle infested shell was interesting amongst the green seaweed and cunjevoi.

On 28 October I went for a walk with Birdlife East Gippsland to the Waste Water Treatment Plant.  A very good outing with 41 species recorded - including huge numbers of Grey Teal (1300) and Hardhead (640).  On the way out an arboreal marsupial was observed.

 Later that day driving along Lakeside Dr a family of Australian Wood Ducks were seen.

Later in the month we went to Bastion Point and found a few interesting things.