If we’d turned right at Willare we’d have come to the town of Fitzroy Crossing where the bridge was recently destroyed by flood. The next major city in that direction is Darwin. Broome to Darwin is about 1800 km. With the bridge down Broome to Darwin became a 6,400km journey for a while.
The Fitzroy River also runs through Willare where it took out the road leaving the bridges standing. Poor old Derby at that stage was a boat trip to anywhere. Roadworks are in progress but there is still a lengthy section of single lane alternating in direction.
The trip was essentially a scouting trip to find suitably photogenic Boabs. There are plenty in Broome decorating our parks and gardens and some are quite old and splendid but they don’t occur naturally. The authentic ones start to appear in the landscape about 120 km up the road.
Adansonia gregorii
Baobabs belong to the genus Adansonia. The centre of their diversity is Madagascar where there are six native species, Africa has a seventh, we have the eighth. Ours is closely related to the African one. It found its way here as a floating seed.
Here its name was treated with the same respect accorded the Possum and Goanna.
Into the mangroves once more, This time at Crab Creek out past the Broome Bird Observatory. The specific target was Dusky Gerygone which I found but it was too flighty to photograph. Other birds, though, were more accommodating like these very cute Mangrove Grey Fantails …
and I made progress on the Mangrove Golden Whistler. A few years ago these were almost unknown in this particular patch of mangroves. On the rare occasions they keep still there’s always a stick or two between the lens and the bird. One day …
I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study. – Ezra Cornell
Serious birdos need some means of recording their observations, preferably in a form that will spit out life lists, state lists, patch lists, backyard lists, birds seen out of the toilet window lists and a few more. Gazing at these lists will give them hours of pleasure especially if they are bigger than their frenemies.
Universities need data. This can be time consuming, tedious and costly to accumulate. So here’s the deal. We’ll keep your lists (on-line) for free and throw in an app that will help you get your ID’s right. You can use it on your laptop and/or your mobile device. So saith Cornell University of Ithaca, New York, USA, founded in 1865 (and at last they’ve done something useful).
But here’s the catch – you’ll have to do it our way.
The database is eBird. You access it through your web browser plus you can enter your observations on the mobile app available wherever you get your apps. The ID assistant is Merlin also downloaded to your mobile device. There is enough functionality in the mobile apps to go on working when there is no service. Essential for birding in Australia.
Off you go into the bush. Start your list. The app will track location and duration of the session. Input the species as you go. Upload the lot when you’re finished. If you have a target species looking it up in Merlin will give you pictures, a distribution map and in most instances recordings of its calls. All this information comes from those who went before you. You are standing on the shoulders of giants.
So far so good but doing it their way means taking a fine grained approach to location, counting birds – yes they want the numbers and writing notes to justify some of your observations. If you are really lucky and see something truly rare a moderator will take the fun out of it with naked skepticism – by email. Try not to be too precious – I console myself by checking where they are in the top 100. To date way behind me!
Cornell make it pretty easy to get up to speed via that other university – YouTube …
What of the data that Cornell gets in return? That’s their problem but its also a riveting topic among birdwatchers. Imagine a roomful of introverts who can barely make eye contact getting heated about the uselessness of the lists that some morons submit. Fortunately these discussions, as fiery as they may be, don’t last long, we’d all rather be home comparing our positions in the top 100.
A dead mangrove, much bigger than the trees that now surround it, provides a convenient perch for an Osprey contemplating its next fish dinner. It regards me with total disdain as I wade into position for a photograph.
About 35km from Broome the Great Northern Highway crosses the Roebuck Plains. This year’s big wet saw the road closed by flood. It is drying out quite quickly now but there is still standing water on both sides of the bitumen. The birds are loving it …
These photos of a Gull-billed Tern were taken at one two thousandth of a second so fortunately there was plenty of light. I prefer flight shots with wings up. I feel they convey a greater dynamism but they are often marred by the shadow cast by the wing. If you click on the wing down shot the feather detail on the wing makes up to some extent for the less dynamic pose.
What you really need is a well trained Tern that will expose its armpit to the sun.
I started bird watching in primary school. The reasons why are hard to fathom. No one else in the family had any interest in birds or natural history. It’s important for context to know that I am a baby boomer born and raised in the east end of London. We had a small library, one set of encyclopedias and four other books. These were treated with great reverence. Hands had to be washed prior to touching them. One of them was a bird book, a coffee table sort of tome, words and pictures … in colour (partly). Maybe that helped spark an interest.
We lived about 10 minutes walk from the North Circular Road where it passed through the green belt, remnants of Epping Forest. I was permitted to go watch birds in the forest adjacent to Whipps Cross Hospital. On the other side of the North Circular there was much more woodland and the Hollow Ponds. Fortunately my parents never paid attention to my lists. Swans, Coots and ducks were rare on my side of the road.
What I liked to do was walk, look and make a list. It’s what I still like to do almost 70 years on.
Those lists were on scraps of paper. They are lost. The notion of keeping a life list didn’t occur until the computer age caught up with me. I got into computers and began entering up my records which by that stage were recorded in notebooks. The user interface of the software available at the time was woeful. After a brief stint using a bought one I wrote my own. Then I created a suite of queries to generate any reports I felt the need for.
The DIY approach avoided one major hurdle. At the outset most people would have thought that the taxonomy of birds was well understood and not likely to change much. DNA technology soon fixed that. Had I stayed with the bought one I’d have had to buy a new version every time there was a major change to the official world order. As it was the system met my needs for 30 years but the work of maintaining the underlying taxonomy and of reconciling all the splits and lumps grew with every year and every continent visited.
What I wanted was my records on my computer, suitably backed up of course, simple and efficient data entry and reporting and for someone else to do the work. And now I have it.
The solution comes in two parts. On my computer I have some free software called Scythebill. It is home to my records. On the web there is eBird. It takes care of the taxonomy maintenance. Data entry has moved into the field with the eBird mobile app on my phone. It records time, distance and location automatically. Data entry requires just a few keystrokes for each species. Scythebill will accept the list from eBird with minimum fuss. Either system can stand alone but they do mesh very nicely.
I’ll write more about eBird in a future blog. If you feel any temptation to write lists of birds or engage in citizen science do it on eBird. It’s free and a great solution to your record keeping and if you do get more serious at a later date your life list will be there waiting for you.
A fascinating morning on yet another beach with Dianne Bennett. Di is a dinosaurologist and local treasure who leads tours to see the famous dinosaur tracks of the Broome sandstone. It’s not a boat tour, no champagne and lobster just a walk on the rocks, a wealth of knowledge, enthusiasm and all at a very reasonable price.
The Broome Sandstone dates to 130 million years ago give or take a few million. It slowly built up in layers. Sometimes conditions were suitable for preservation of footprints, sometimes not. Tracks are found at several levels. Di showed us two very different sets of tracks belonging to Sauropods and Theropods.
Dinosaurs come in two big flavours Ornithiscians and Saurischians. The Ornithiscian pelvis resembles that of birds, the Saurischian pelvis that of lizards. The general consensus is that birds are living dinosaurs descended not from the Ornithischia but from the lizard-hipped Saurischia. Each of these main divisions are further divided. The tracks we saw were from Sauropods and Theropods which are both Saurischians.
The Sauropods were long-necked, long-tailed, small headed herbivores. Not all Sauropods were immense, some were only 5 or 6 metres long but the largest animal to ever walk the earth was a Sauropod around 30 metres long and weighing something in the order of 70 tonnes..
Shamelessly filched from Wikipedia
I have no idea how accurate this depiction is except that the feet fit what we found to a tee. The back foot is bigger than the front foot and comes up close to it at every stride …
and here it is heading from right to left across what was a mud flat and it was way bigger than a modern elephant.
Once the search pattern was established Sauropod footprints were all around us. Theropod footprints are smaller and were not impressed so deeply in the mud. Di pointed out the first then they too became easier to find.
Theropods walked on their hind legs. Diets were varied, herbivory, insectivory and carnivory were all represented. T. rex was a carnivorous Theropod but never visited Broome. Here is a Herrerasaurus to represent the group.
Shamelessly filched from Wikipedia
Three toes facing forward, a hind claw that may not have reached the ground or make a big impression if it did …
The local aboriginal people have stories about Marala, the Emu-Man. This print is considerably bigger than an emu’s and your average emu doesn’t leave prints in solid rock. It’s easy to see why they were impressed.
Sadly the Broome sandstone doesn’t seem to have preserved any body parts. We have no dinosaur skeletons to put in the museum. But we can follow in the footsteps of immense creatures that preceded us by 130 million years and raise our gaze to the Reef Egrets, Kites and Gulls – living Theropods.
We made contact with Dianne Bennett through Broome Visitor Centre. You can also find her on Facebook or ring her on 0457 681 265.
bobmcgee 