The Channel-billed cuckoos have arrived !

Late last Saturday afternoon (2nd October 2022), a flicker of movement caught my eye whilst I was mowing the back lawn of Casa da Ayre.  A momentary glimpse of three large grey birds flying flat out, zooming at 5 - 6 m height between the neighbours trees.  Channel-bills?  Most likely.  But it was just a very, very brief glimpse and I'm expecting to see them any moment.  

At 11:50 AM today (Tuesday 4th October), the unmistakable raucous shrieks of  channel-billed cuckoos echoed around the backyard at Casa da Ayre.  One of the benefits of WTF (Working From Home) is that I was home today to hear them arrive.  I'm 99.9% certain I saw a trio of them last Saturday, but I am 100% certain of this morning's sighting. 

Both species of migratory cuckoo are here now.  Spring is here !  The dollarbirds won't be far behind, and the fishing (and herping) starts improving every day forwards.           

The Eastern koels have arrived for 2022 and random fishing notes

Every year I note the changing of the seasons via the arrival of the migratory cuckoos.  Typically I see or usually hear the channel-billed cuckoos in late September or early October, and the Eastern (aka Pacific) koels follow a few days later.  

Last Sunday morning, 25th September 2022 Amanda told me she was sure she had heard a koel calling at first light.  I was sound asleep and it had stopped calling by the time I stirred.  We didn't hear it call again that day. 

The next afternoon I was exercising our dogs, when a male Eastern koel began to call from a tree, just a few hundred metres from Casa da Ayre.  I didn't see him, but the call is truly unmistakable.    

Spring is definitely here. For once, the koels have arrived BEFORE the Channel-billed cuckoos.

An interesting anecdote is the fishing in Lake Macquarie - my usually extremely reliable shallow-water whiting & bream spot let me down badly last Sunday night.  

It was the night before the new moon and for the first time in my memory there were no yabbie burrows visible at all. "Squirt" worms were widespread, plenty of fiddler crabs on the waters edge, and small poddy mullet, and stacks of small "greasy back" prawns were foraging in the shallows. I stocked up on prawns for bait, though I was very tempted to eat nearly half of them.  They are a good size already and next month's new moon is likely to see a bountiful prawn "run" in Swansea channel.  Whilst hunting yabbies, I caught a few prawns and cast them back out whilst chasing more bait.  Usually this will quickly result in a fat sand whiting or yellow-finned bream.  Unfortunately the action was extremely pedestrian.  I eventually landed a large eel and a legal sized bream, but released both of them unharmed.  They were great sport on my light tackle, but not the plump fish I was seeking to invite home for dinner.  There were plenty of small-to-medium poddy mullet about, and I saw around a dozen, very much undersized whiting right up in the shallows.  I didn't see any legal sized fish.    

It was interesting to note that the water in the shallows was still quite cool, (~14 - 15 degrees) and I didn't see a single yabby burrow in the entire area - which is a first.  The obvious thing that springs to mind is we are in a very prolonged period of wet weather.

My hypothesis is the salinity level is much lower than normal and the yabbies can't tolerate the changed salinity for such a prolonged period.  It has been over a year of consistently very wet weather.  I'll check my other yabby beds in Swansea channel and see if the yabbies are still present nearer the ocean.  Normally I'd have quickly pumped a good number of yabbies, and caught three or four very solid whiting whilst collecting the bait.  I suspect that the total lack of yabbies resulted in no whiting being caught.  Hopefully things will have improved on my next trip.           

Channel-billed cuckoos have arrived for Spring 2021

Spring 2021 seems to be running a bit later than usual.  My first sighting of a Channel-billed cuckoo this year was at 11:00 am on Monday 4th October 2021.  One adult Channel-billed cuckoo was being pursued vigorous by a mob of angry Noisy miners, and landed in a tree across the road from my home here in Belmont North.

Normally I'd have at least heard their unmistakable raucous calls or seen them much earlier than this, so perhaps the change of seasons is happening a little later this year.  Usually the Eastern koels are right behind them - and you cannot mistake their calls either.  I haven't heard or observed Koels yet either, so it might add fuel to the speculation of a late start to Spring.  

Differing from every year of my life, we have been in lockdown off and on since 2020, and forced to work from home.  So there is no way I could have missed hearing or seeing either of these prominent migratory species arrive in Belmont North.  

Thanks for stopping by and stay healthy !         

Don't Panic - CANE TOADS ABOUT !

 

I was working quietly yesterday, sipping coffee and churning through my tasks with zen-like focus. It was Friday and my weekend was so close I could taste it. Even better, after months of constant, horror bushfires and terrible drought; it was raining heavily outside. Utter bliss !

My serenity was shattered when a friend approached, his face long, asking whether I'd seen today's Newcastle Herald?

On their website, front-and-centre, with a glorious full-colour photo of a beautiful, obviously very "pregnant"*, native Perons tree frog was an article, "CANE TOAD found on Maryland verandah".  To paraphrase, the article went on to reveal how the invasive cane toad had been caught, identified as a cane toad by the resident & put in the freezer.  

I couldn't believe it.  OK, fair enough that a member of the public had made a mistake.  We've all been swamped with the message to watch out for the terrible cane toad - it's on it's way here, it kills everything that tries to eat it, etc, etc, etc.  People are trying to do the right thing by our environment. 

I was annoyed that a journalist didn't take the time to do the obvious.  How hard was it to check the ID with one of our world renowned frog experts at the nearby University of Newcastle (just a few suburbs away from Maryland), the National Parks & Wildlife Service office at the Hunter Wetlands Centre (also a few suburbs away from Maryland), get on the phone to the Australian Museum or do something as simple as a google image search ?

  

Fortunately they corrected the story a few hours later, see screenshot below;  

OK this time the animal was a very common, non-threatened native animal.  It is probable that hundreds just like her will be unknowingly run over by motorists in this evening's rain across the Hunter valley.  But it is food for thought isn't it?  The lesson for anyone who reads articles about invasive animals like the cane toad is clear.  Talk only to your National Parks & Wildlife Service or wildlife authorities before you do anything as drastic as killing an animal that might actually be a native animal, or even worse - an endangered native animal.            

* Not actually "pregnant" - based on the time of year and her very obviously distended abdomen, she was gravid - chock full of thousands of unfertilised eggs and ready to spawn that evening in the teeming rain.    

A rustle in the garden . . .

This video is in very high resolution on YouTube, so if it's not clear for you here on the blog, be sure to click the link and open it in YouTube.  

Look closely next time you hear a tiny rustle in your garden, there might be something interesting in the undergrowth.  I am a life-long naturalist/ecologist and find the antics of the Penny lizards, (Lampropholis delicata) captivating.  

They are one of our most common reptiles here in suburban Lake Macquarie, and a really interesting and often over-looked reptile.  These are fully-grown adults at about 7 cm long.  

At the time of shooting (late April 2018), we are over-run with this years' surviving crop of hatchlings, which are tiny, endearing little beasties about 1/3rd the size of the adults.  See THIS post for more.  I'll try and shoot some footage of them in the next video.  

On a happier note . . .

Sugar Glider, Western Lake Macquarie, 28th March 2018 

One of the great things about working in the environmental field is the opportunity to see wildlife that the vast majority of local residents will never see.  I've been helping out a good friend with a fauna survey over the last three months, and it never ceases to amaze me what species are living in my own back yard.

Working with endangered frogs I learned very quickly that MANY species are far more common than originally thought, it just people are not in the field in the correct weather pattern, because it's not very pleasant.  For example, the winter breeding frogs had relatively little known about them until recently because humans would rather be tucked up in bed or in front of a fire in the middle of winter when temperatures are at their lowest and it's pouring rain, muddy, wet and very slippery.  

There was a species of locally very common frog formally named for the first time recently.  What is not revealed in the literature was that I found the very first specimens because I was in the field at the right time back in the early 1990's.  I have the precise locality data and dates for them in my log books.  I spent hours and hours and hours in the field, spent thousands of dollars, drove my car hundreds and hundreds of kilometres and was lucky enough to find them, and show them to the person they would eventually be named after.  At the time, he thought they were simply a strange colour variation, not a completely new species to science.         

On Wednesday night, we found this Sugar glider photographed above, with my mobile phone in an urban area.  Last night we found a Yellow bellied glider in a very similar area, close to my home.  We've seen Ring-tailed possums, Brush-tailed possums, owls, fruit bats, bush rats, dear little antechinuses and bandicoots in remnant vegetation patches all over the Lake Macquarie area.  It truly is all about spending time in your local patch of bush.     

         

Lace monitor DOR

Lace monitor dead-on-road 16th March 2018 

I encountered the pathetic sight of one of the largest Lace monitors I have ever seen, dead-on-the-road on the way home from work last week.  This thing was huge, a solid 5 feet long, and thick.  It would have weighed around 10 kilos of pure, savage muscle.  I know because I dragged it's body off the road, so scavengers wouldn't be killed by traffic.  The surrounding environment was mature Eucalypt woodland, and there were raptors and Australian ravens in the area.  I believe there would probably be quolls in the area from past experience in nearby forests.

I wonder if this animal was following the scent trail of a nearby female, as on Monday I saw a much smaller Lace monitor dead in almost the same spot.