Borrowed images of Pigeons and Oystercatchers

My brother Brendan has sent me some photos of some interesting birds he has seen recently. These were not taken in Robertson, although the White-headed Pigeon is a seasonal visitor here.

The first are some Sooty Oystercatchers, which Brendan photographed at Gerroa, NSW (south from Kiama, and north from the wonderful Seven Mile Beach) on 17 December 2011.

It is not hard to work out how these birds get their name.

They are dusky coloured,

and they pick their way around rocky shelves

looking for juicy inter-tidal snacks to eat (not necessarily oysters).

Sooty Oystercatchers (courtesy B. Wilson)

Sooty Oystercatchers (courtesy B. Wilson)

Sooty Oystercatchers (courtesy B. Wilson)

Here is the best image Brendan took, cropped a bit, to show its details.

Sooty Oystercatcher - a portrait (courtesy B. Wilson)

Lawrence Finn, Brendan's son-in-law, took some photos of White-headed Pigeons when visiting at Dalmeny recently. Here are the images he captured (reduced to make them web-friendly). As mentioned in the introduction, these Pigeons are seasonal visitors to Robertson, but these photos were taken on the Far South Coast of NSW.

White-headed Pigeon (courtesy L. Finn)

  This is a magnificent male bird, in fine condition.

White-headed Pigeon (courtesy L. Finn)

 Male White-headed Pigeon.

Females have a duller cap, 
and greyer (not shiny white) breast feathers.

White-headed Pigeon (courtesy L. Finn)

Thanks to Brendan and Lawrence for the use of these images.

Southern Right Whales at Dalmeny (near Narooma, NSW)

Regular readers will know that I am fond of "threatened species" - even big, fat, wet and slippery ones. So, as with other "out of area" reports I will post this, even thought they are not from Robertson. They are probably moving north up along the Shoalhaven or Illawarra Coast as I write - and that's close enough for me. 
Special pleading for a rare sighting.

My brother, Brendan has sent me a set of images of three Southern Right Whales, close in to the shore, at a place he refers to as "Josh's Beach" at Dalmeny, near Narooma, NSW.

Close to shore - a Southern Right Whale just visible here.

As explained on that linked site (above) these Whales were nearly hunted to extinction in Australian waters by the 1840s, and have only recovered in numbers slowly since we decided to protect them. These days they are on the "IUCN Red List" of endangered species (albeit in the "of least concern" category),


Brendan's accompanying note explains the background to his "sighting" and why he was excited by the "encounter". Fair enough, too!

• "Three Southern Right Whales took up station (on Monday 11 July 2011) off the northern rocks at Josh's beach for a couple of hours late this morning.  They were as close as 30 metres off the rocks and they stayed there for a couple of hours - more than enough time for me to go home, get binoculas and a camera and get a couple of shots.  Not good enough for Australian Geographic but good enough to identify the animals.

• "I have never seen Southern Right Whales before.  They are quite different to Humpbacks.  In fact the photos I sent you are good enough to identify the species.  The shape of the side fin and the bump on the nose are visible and diagnostic. There are heaps of data and photos on the Net. 

Click on the image to see the details.

Southern Right Whales (3). (Note the lumps on the nose)

• "They are large (16 m or 60 foot) and fat and go up to 80 tonnes.  They only swim about 3 km/hour and because of their lack of speed, because they swim inshore and because they had a high oil content they were the "Right" whale to hunt.  As a result "we" pushed them to the brink of extinction by 1835.  They were one of the first animals ever to be protected by law - Tasmania - if you can call that law, in 1840.

• "They were in close.  In fact (back in March) Lindsay and I snorkelled pretty much where the Whales were (this week)."

Plant branch on lower right of image shows how close they were.

Three Southern Right Whales - one waving its flipper.

Here is another link to show you more information about these Southern Right Whales.

Dalmeny under water

My brother, Brendan lives at Dalmeny, just north of Narooma. (see attached Map) Actually he lives in a little patch of Eucalypt forest immediately south of the coastal settlement of Dalmeny. He has supplied the information and photographs in this post.

The Footbridge over Mummaga Lake (creek) at Dalmeny
16 February 2010

Mummaga Lake opened to the sea overnight 15 February 2010
Seen here on 16/2/2010.

"They also serve who only stand and wait" (Milton)

Brendan has told me, over the last couple of days of the rain they have been having down there. Remarkably, Narooma topped the State in rainfall till 9:00am this morning (for rain which mostly fell yesterday). Not often Narooma does that. Robertson is more likely to have that distinction, or Dorrigo.

It seems they have had even more rain today in Narooma..

Earlier today he wrote:

• We had 152 mm to 9:00 am.
• It is currently pissing down and more heavily than over the last 24 hours. The radio reports today are that it is raining at about 25 mm per hour for up to 3 hours in a hit.
• The highway is cut both sides of Bodalla.
• All the lakes are cut (open) to the sea.
  
• Tuross Lake opened last week and released the three dolphins that were captive there for about 18 months.
• Yesterday Kianga Creek opened. It is seriously septic because of algal blooms - they had collapsed before Christmas and were sitting in an anaerobic state on the bottom of the lake. When the initial water escaped it smelled really bad. I am hoping that this second storm will scour out the crap from the bottom of the lake.
• Dewsbury beach has an opening at each end (small creeks flowing to the sea).
• Our own swamp was across the bottom of Eucalyptus Drive and is broken to the sea.
• Mummaga Lake (Dalmeny) is almost up to the pedestrian bridge and raging to the sea. The sand bar broke open overnight.
• How is your arid zone. You only had 42 mm yesterday. (Very Funny - DJW)
  

This evening he said:

• South East NSW has been in drought for some years.
• Last week we got about 170 mm across 4 days. Over 3 days till 9:00 am this morning we had 278 mm and we most likely had a further 200 mm today. Very soggy.
• No problems with the house or garage, but there is some damage in the garden.
• Attached are a couple of photos of the area.
• This on the main drag into Dalmeny about 400 m before the shops (opposite the fire station and tennis courts).

Real Estate website

Fortunately, on the scale of floods, this is relatively minor flooding.
But no doubt for the owners, it is a"big deal".

• The rain seems to have eased off in the last couple of hours.

DJW Comments: It is really good that these various Lakes and streams have opened to the sea. Brendan mentioned that Dolphins had been trapped in Tuross Lake. They are now free. It will also allow fish stocks to be renewed, and the Prawns too.

DJW UPDATE:
The Bureau's weather records were "jammed" and presumably some person needed to approve the publication of an "anomaly" in their records. It was published at 11:00am this morning (16/2/2010):
Rainfall at Narooma - last two days:
Monday 15 February 2010 151.6mm
Tuesday 16 February 2010 161.8mm
That is a pretty amazing amount of rain to fall consistently over two days.

Other South Coast Bloggers:
My Blogging colleague David of "Focus on Nature" wrote last week of the storms they had at Bermagui. No doubt he has had even more since then, too.
James Woodford, who writes "Real Dirt" from somewhere south from Moruya, has also written about the Lakes opening, and fish being freed from stagnant lagoons and Eels on the move.

Frogmouths at Dalmeny (South Coast NSW)

My brother Brendan lives amongst the Spotted Gum and Stringybark Eucalypt trees at Dalmeny, near Narooma, on the far South Coast of NSW.

Recently he found a nest of the Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigioides).

These interesting birds are nocturnal, but they are not Owls. They are insectivorous, with very large wide beaks, suitable for catching insects on the wing. They have weak feet (unlike Owls which pounce on their prey with their large claws). They are famous for their camouflage technique of blending in with the look of a short branch, in Eucalypt trees.

Several days ago, this bird arrived beside his 80 year old neighbour's window.

A rescue plan was initiated, of course.
The youngster was moved into a tree fork.
Here is it, sitting there, but looking unimpressed.
This is a cracker of a shot.

Brendan told me, in a later email that he stuck the bird up a tree were it stayed for the day and apparently till between midnight and three a.m.. It was calling periodically, but there was no evidence that it was being fed.

The next morning his neighbour went out and turned on some sprinklers - and the bird fluttered out from some low shubs. It had been at ground level and was not being looked after.

It seems that there were originally two young. The one that was photographed appears to have been the runt of the litter. He guessed that the parents moved on with the other young one.

There were then a couple of phone calls to WIRES, into a cardboard box and in to the local vet. He is expecting to get a report back on the bird either late this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

So, let us hope that the WIRES people have some success with this youngster.

Feathertail Glider at Dalmeny, NSW

This looks like a mouse, and is about the same size, but that is where the resemblance ends. It is a tiny native marsupial, a Feathertail Glider. It is related to the much more familiar native animals, such as Brush-tailed Possums (see below) and the less-familiar large Gliders, such as the Yellow-bellied Glider (which is as long as a Cat) or the photogenic (mid-sized) Sugar Glider.This tiny creature rejoices in the name of Acrobates pygmaeus. Sort of says it all, doesn't it?

This is the report from my brother Brendan, who captured these images and sent them to me.

• "The photos (of the Feathertail Glider) and the Daddy Long Legs are in our main room just near our bedroom door.
  
• "We have had hassles with them nesting in our roof cavity. They were getting in at the end of the barrel vault and "holing up" in their beautifully insulated residence. Trouble was that occasionally they would get along the roof past the (venting) fans and then they could and did glide down and get trapped in the house. Before we moved down here there was no escape and no food or water. So four of them ended up in the CSIRO (wildlife) collection at Gungahlin (i.e., having died of natural causes, trapped in an empty house, Brendan took the "specimens" to CSIRO "Wildlife" in Canberra).
  
• "There was another occasion when Beth was here on her own and one para-glided down onto the bed. I got a phone call saying "What do I do? I don't like this at all." She also said some other things too. Response was: "Open the bloody doors" . . . . . . . that worked.
• "About two weeks ago I had the ends of the roof barrel vault closed off properly.
• "Yesterday Beth was cleaning the gutters of leaves and then she noticed one (of these Gliders) clinging to the side of the house near the bridge. She had probably swept it out with some leaves. About 10pm I put some food out for the possums and left the door open while I was out there. Then we found this little fellow sitting on top of the blind (just above the door) from the patio. He (or she - I did not ask***) was spooked by the flash and went to the corner, where I got the Daddy Long Legs photos. It then went up the shadow-line rebate to the internal barrel vault and disappeared into the roof cavity. When it was spooked I was expecting it to glide out of trouble, and did not even consider that it could or would climb up the shadow-line where wall meets ceiling.
• "It poked it's head out when the house went dark, but retreated again when I used a torch. So we left the front and back sliding doors open, but not enough for the Brush-tails and went to bed. I figure it got out OK."

That sounds like a happy ending to this story, to me (Denis).

Here is Brendan's Feathertail Glider running along the very top of the wall.

It did not like being "flashed" with Brendan's Camera, so it tried to hide in the corner of the room. Note the Daddy Long Legs spider as a "scale" reference point. It is a tiny little Marsupial. It is hunched up in this pose, making it appear even smaller than it is. The tip of the tail is seemingly "V-shaped". That is because of the stiff hairs on either side of the tail (from which it gets its common name). This is part of this animal's aerodynamic structure.Remember that this animal is a "glider". As it leaps from high points, it spreads the fine skin between its front and back legs, which acts much like a paraglider. (See this image of a Sugar Glider "in the air", to get the idea of how they can glide through the air, covering a considerable distance.) The fringes on the tail also helps give this tiny creature a little extra "lift" when it is in the air.

Here is the best of Brendan's images of the Feathertail Glider.
You can clearly see the white line between the back and the abdomen.
That is the edge of the flap of skin which it uses when gliding.

The bulge under the tail, behind the back leg, reveals the answer to Brendan's unasked question***. It is clearly a male.

Here is a photo of a pair of Brush-tailed Possums, on my roof gutter, for size comparison. The large male, on the left, is roughly the size of a domestic Cat.

Dalmeny wildlife (South Coast, NSW)

Over the last few days I have stayed with my brother Brendan and his wife, Beth, at Dalmeny, NSW.

I have been away from Robbo for a few days, for medical tests, and then I took the weekend off and went south, to stay at Brendan and Beth's place, just north of Narooma, on the far south coast of NSW. I have visited with them before, but not for some time.

Unfortunately, I got caught out without my camera being fully operational, as I had spent Wednesday with Alan Stephenson and Colin and Mischa, checking out yet more rare Orchids in the Shoalhaven region. I will have photos later on. Trouble was I took lots of "flash" images, and I ran my battery down, without having brought my battery charger with me on my trip.

So, when I got to Dalmeny several days later, and I wanted to take some images of special wildlife, my camera would not display its "menu" data (nor "review" images I had just taken, so I was literally "shooting blind", without even being able to set the exposure time and aperture. That's really amateurish of me.

The first images are of a very co-operative Royal Spoonbill (Platalea regia), which was feeding beside a "boardwalk" in the estuary at Narooma. The beak is wonderfully adapted to feeding by "dabbling" in the estuary environment, amongst water weeds, hunting by feel for shrimps and other small aquatic creatures. As the bird feeds "blind" - i.e., by feel, the broad soft beak is an advantage to it. Other "wading birds" of similar size, such as the Herons and Egrets, have forward focussing eyes and razor sharp beaks. That enables those birds to see their prey firstly, then seize them with great precision. Spoonbills have eyes placed on the side of their heads (for good all-round vision) and they are working with a beak form similar to two kitchen "spatulas". This structure, with greatly increasing the "touch sensitivity" of their beaks, compared to a Heron or Egret. The Birds in Backyards website says: "The spatulate bill has many vibration detectors, called papillae, on the inside of the spoon, which means the bird can feel for prey items even in murky water and can feed by day or night."You can see the yellow eye-lids, and the red mark above the beak, in the middle of this bird's forehead. Click to enlarge the image.When feeding, the bird sweeps the bill sideways, through the water, "dabbling" the beak open and closed quickly, all the time, until it feels an object it wants to eat (there are fine sensors in the beak to tell the difference between a prawn, a fish or a crab - and a stone). Once it decides the object it has touched is "food", it "freezes" for just a moment, and then literally throws its prey down its throat, by a very fast reverse neck movement - bringing the beak suddenly backwards, then opening the beak and straightening its neck out forwards again, swallowing the prey. In this image, the prey has just disappeared backwards, down its throat. The entire movement was too quick for me to capture on my camera. High definition video cameras come into their own for capturing such moments.Here is a tame (but entirely "wild") Red-necked Wallaby, (Macropus rufogriseus) having breakfast in Brendan's back yard, just below the back patio. There are apparently three of these Wallabies which live near Brendan and Beth's house.
Here is a totally wild Fur Seal, "sun-bathing" (*** see note below) in the estuary at Narooma. It was just floating there, with its front flippers folded across its very full belly. The Seal was mostly just floating on its back, and lowering its head backwards into the water, and looking around underwater. It would bring its nose up to the air briefly, about every minute or so, and resume its restful sun-bathing, while paddling very slowly backwards and forwards, using just one of its rear flippers. The other rear flipper (foot) was held out of the water for extended periods of time. You can see that the left (rear) flipper is quite dry.This Seal was in the stone-lined entrance to the Estuary, known as Wagonga Inlet, just inside the breakwater. It was in a corner of the channel, out of the main current, which was flowing into the Inlet, very fast, a mere 30 metres away from this Seal. Several powerful fishing boats came into the Inlet, while this Seal was just floating the day away, without a care in the world.
You can see how close it was to the rock wall, from where Brendan was watching it. Fur Seals live at Montague Island, some 9 Kms off the coast from Narooma.

(***) Apparently, this habit of "waving" flippers out of the air is part of a thermo-regulation practice, to help cool the animals down. (So perhaps it was not "sun bathing" after all). That interpretation of the behaviour surprises me, given that they live in relatively cool water (compared to the air temperatures, anyway). But then again, I am not a Seal, nor a Seal biologist.