September 2008

Spring is here, and it has been raining, so the water birds and frogs are happy. We're getting reasonably frequent rain at the moment, but the season is still a little below average and after so many years of dry most wetlands and dams are yet to fill. Fingers crossed for a deluge.

Don't know what I was thinking when I wrote the previous statement. Having seen one swan on a nest and heard a couple of frogs croaking, I think I got over excited. Victoria actually experienced it's driest September on record. And Southern Australia is now officially in the midst of the most severe drought on record. More information from the Bureau of Meteorology can be found here.

22nd September

climbing galaxia yarra spiny cray
climbing galaxias Australian Grayling

Our latest Connies swap-card set is out. It's a 15 card set devoted to southern Victorian native freshwater and estuarine fish. We spruked them at the Angair wildflower festival at Angelsea on the weekend. They went down a treat, along with the Aboriginal food and medicine plant cards. What a wonderful bunch of people there are down there. The Angair group has been instrumental in lobbying for the conservation of woodlands and heathlands in the Eastern Otways. They continue to implement important conservation projects and have managed to get large areas of bush put into reserves and parks.

8th September

Cape Barren Geese

Tawny Frogmouth

These two are among a small flock that has been resident in a paddock south of the You Yang hills (north-west of Geelong). They've been there for at least 5 years.

Cape Barren Geese are a Southern Australia species and were once far more common than now, having suffered due to the loss of wetlands. But they have adapted to grazing in pastures and numbers have apparently stabilised.

Cattle Egrets

The largest of the white Australian egrets is the Great Egret - recognisable by the neck being longer then the body. The slightly smaller Intermediate Egret has a neck the same length as it's body. And then there is the smaller Cattle Egret shown here. It has a yellowish hue to it's chest and neck and likes to hang out with cows. They do so because they catch insects that are scared up as the cattle graze.

Black Swans nesting

There is an obsession among the farmers and hobby farmers of Australia with digging holes in the middle of wet spots in paddocks so as to create 'proper wetlands' (by which is meant 'retains open water throughout the year'). But the wet patches are the proper wetlands and support far more diverse and productive ecosystems than a pit of open water can support.

People like to to build big islands in the middle of these pits for birds to nest on. However, as you can see in this photo, many water birds prefer to build their nests as islands in shallow water amongst emergent aquatic-vegetation. This allows them a good field of view from which they can spot approaching predators. By contrast, an island is a target that a preditor such as a fox is more likely to swim to, and when in the water beside a large mound a bird finds it's field of view obscured and so feels less comfortable. Larger birds also require a lengthy runway for landing and take-off and an island (or an dam wall) can get in the way.

The wetland shown here sits on the floodplain of the West Branch of the Barwon River at the point where it emerges from the Otway Ranges onto the Otway Plains. It is dry in summer and is grazed by cattle. In winter it wets to a depth of 1 or 2 feet, water plants sprout, the farmer puts up a temporary electric fence and the swans move in.

(That's a Great Egret in the background I think.)