I will start with a tame plant: growing in our front yard but very attractive at present.  Its a NSW Christmas Bush (Ceratopetalum gummiferum). The red colour is the sepals which dominate the shrub after the petals fall off..

Moving on to wildlife, I went to the mouth of Mullet Creek to count the fruit bats in the colony today.  Not one was to be found at least where I could smell, hear or see them.  

However any day that includes a Monarch butterfly can't be bad.

As I was leaving the area I started to write down Pied Currawong as I heard one call nearby.  Then a Lewin's Honeyeater and a White-browed Scrubwren called from the same spot, followed by a baby's rattles.  We had Lyrebirds!  I had 2 males foraging within 2 metres of each other (and about 7 metres from me.  They didn't seem to be competing with each other just bumbling along, kicking up the litter and occasionally flashing their tail feathers.  The best view of a display I have had.  (They totally ignored me.)

Although they were so close there was still plenty of veg to get in the way of classic photos but even in the cases where most of the bird is blocked the colours and patterns are still spiffy.

Inaugural Mallacoota Bird Walk

 A few months ago I looked at the back cover (somewhat faded in my copy) of Bruce Pascoe's excellent 1979 book "Birds of Mallacoota" ...

...  and wondered why there were no bird walks as such in Mallacoota.  The Footmobiles go to birdy places and members of that group are generally interested in birds, but they are primarily walks not bird outings.  So I decided to organise something myself.

That was all set up to start when the infamous COVID-19 intervened making such an undertaking impossible.  However with a few simple rules to follow that is no longer an issue so I arranged an outing for 5 December.  7 of us turned up, which was a good number for an initial walk.  

The meeting point was at the end of Lakeside Drive and we started by walking to the turning area past Bucklands boat hire.

En route a White-faced Heron posed nicely for a photo.

One of the target birds for the outing was the Nankeen Night-Heron often found roosting in the Pittosorum.  It obliged us today.  Spot the eye!

Another - far better - view of the Night-Heron by Caroline Jones.

The bird was popular with the camera wielders.  Two images by Jack Winterbottom.

The usual species of ducks were on the dame beside the entrance to the Park and several other bush birds flittered in the trees in the Park.  As we headed off towards Karbeethong a pair of Welcome Swallows posed nicely on the sign for Schnapper Point Drive.

We wandered into the open area at the end of Mullet Creek hoping to find Black-faced Monarch (tick for some) and Rufous Fantail (fail).  However we got a bonus of a beautiful white-phase Grey Goshawk perching in a tree and photographed by Caroline ...

.. and Jack.

A pair of Whistling Kites sailed over head.  The Grey-headed Flying-foxes were adopting a somewhat lower profile than a couple of days ago but still registered on, in descending order of strength of evidence, ears, nose and eyes.

As we left the area a Grey Fantail landed on this nest in which some very small chicks were evident.  We bolted to the road and on looking back saw the adult land again so we had thankfully not disturbed the parents.

Arriving back at the cars we were entertained by a family of Golden Whistlers.  The fully coloured adult male didn't pose for a photo but I did get a sort-of snap of the begging immature.  

All up we recorded 39 species listed in the eBird checklist.    https://ebird.org/australia/checklist/S77066191

As an aside I thught the flowers of this low hanging Lillipilli were quite pleasant and are hopefully a sign of pigeon food to come.

Weather Report November 2020

 In summary a warm and damp month.

Rainfall

At Angophora Drive my Weather Station recorded 75.4 mm of rain through the month.  This compares with 57.8 mm at the BoM Mallacoota site, 31.2 mm at BoM Gabo Island and 60.9mm at a private station in the town centre.  The main causes of the difference are storm cells around the 13th and 23rd (different station reset times confuse matters somewhat) giving localised high readings.  This is reflected in the rain rates with a maximum rate on the 12th of 164mm/hr and on the 23rd of 60.4mm/hr. For a change, my WS received the cells and the other sites missed out.

Looking at the month as a total the fall was well above November 2019 and ~20% above the median fall for the area.

The cumulative rainfall for the year so far is 931 mm and doing a pro rata estimate of the total for 2020 gives 1008 mm for the year as a total. 

Temperatures

My overall assessment of temperatures is the difference between the average temperature for the month and the the long term mean average.   I calculate the average as (Max+min)/2 doing the calculation on a daily basis using data for  the BoM site at Mallacoota airport.  Over the month as a whole the anomaly came out to +2C, which is quite a high value.  The next chart shows the development of the value through the month.

Looking at the daily readings the average as calculated was above the long term mean equivalent on 21 of the 30 days. There were only 5 days in which both maximum and minimum were below the long term means but 17 days where both were above the long term mean.

The other overall presentation is the daily extremes.

Minimum Temperatures

The lowest minimum recorded in the month was 7.2C on the 8th.  More than 10% of minima for Novembers are lower than this.  The average minimum for the month was very much higher than 2019 or the long term average.  This is not surprising as the minimum was above the long term average on 23 of 30 nights.

Maximum Temperatures

The highest maximum for the month recorded on my Weather Station was 30.8C recorded on the 22nd.  There was one other day above 30C.  Comparing my results with the past shows 2020 as having a considerably higher average maximum.  

Considering a smoothing polynomial for both series suggests that the 2020 series of average daily maxima was a little above the (largely BoM data) past average for the first 6 months of the year.  That is quite usual as the coastal exposure of the BoM site takes the edge off hot days.  However the gap widens considerably from August onwards.

A similar statement can be made if the comparison is restricted to BoM data.  I conclude that La Nina has kicked in.

Humidity

The daily traces for humidity at the two standard times are as usual quite variable.  The rainy days stand out where the afternoon reading is very close to, or above, the morning reading.  

On the other hand it is unusual to record an rH of 40% as happened on the 4th only: 1.2% of my humidity readings (since February 2019) are that low.  I have prepared confidence intervals (average + 1.96 Standard Deviations) for each hour across all months.  As shown below a reading of 40% is very close to the lower limit for 1500 hrs.

The value of rH  for 0900 was above average ...

... while that for 1500 was below average, but above the value for 2019.

Wind

The chart of daily wind runs shows several days above 200km, with an impressive 357 km on the 11th.  That is the 5th windiest day since we moved here in February 2019.  

There has been a bit of discussion on Facebook about the wind on 29 November causing boats out at sea to run for home, and blowing many pelagic birds inshore.  That day doesn't show up as extraordinary in the daily chart.  That is because it was a short blast of wind as a change came through, compared to the more or less continual long hourly runs of the 11th.

In the historical graph below I have adjusted the long term average runs to allow for the greater exposure of the BoM site.  The month was less windy than 2019 (both measured at my weather station) but a little above the expected value from the long term average

In terms of wind direction I have graphed the direction of the wind at the hour and the direction of the strongest gust in each hour.  I am still contemplating what this all means.

A short ride on Lakeside Drive

 This morning I went for a short ride along Lakeside Drive to Bucklands this morning.  I wrote down 33 species of birds which wasn't too shabby for a horribly windy day.  My first excitement was seeing a Black-faced Monarch on the uphill side of the stretch towards the boat ramp.

I have no idea why its beak is open: I couldn't hear a call.

Then, on the way back I came across at least 3 Rufous Fantails.  They were unfortunately active so a photo was not possible with my poor hand/eye coordination!   I did manage to get a snap of this Superb Lyrebird shifting litter beside the road.

The most eye-catching vegetation at present is Bursaria spinosa.

If one tries to burrow through a copse of this it soon becomes very evident why one of its vernacular names is "Blackthorn".  Wear Kevlar!  It has a reputation as a very good species for attracting insects.

A large number of decibels were emanating from the bottom of Mullet Creek, indicating the Grey-headed Flying Fox colony is back in business.

Pretty flowers

This is possibly a bit of a stretch for 'wildlife' as all these plants are in gardens and are not growing wild anywhere in the area.  I'll justify it on the grounds that 

• they offer food to wildlife;
• they are pretty; and
• I set the rules!

All the photos were taken in the Angophora Drive - Stingray Point area.  The first few are of Kangaroo Paws (Anigozanthos sp).

The next are various varieties of Grevillea sp.