Annual Report 2013: overall picture

This is an overall report on birds observed in Carwoola in 2013.  I use the term Carwoola to cover the catchment area of the Stoney Creek Gazette,  As well as Carwoola itself it includes a bunch of localities (including Primrose Valley and, importantly, Hoskinstown) to the SE of Queanbeyan.  It is illustrated in this sketch map:

The database I maintain is pretty well restricted to that area to provide some consistency.  However if very interesting birds are reported in a some what wider area:

• where people might like to go and view the birds (eg sightings of Banded Lapwings just outside  Bungendore and Plumed Whistling Ducks on dams close thereto); or
• the sighting suggests we should keep an eye in case they also turn up here

I will also include them on this blog but not the database nor - other than mentions like this - in my reports.

While I largely followed the model used for the Annual Report for 2011 and 2012, in particular the decision to adopt a multi-post approach, what follows has to some extent evolved during writing.  .  (For those that think the result is still too long, the Canberra Ornithologists Group Annual Bird Report is 80 A5 pages - and 2Mb to download!)

This report will be a bit heavy on numbers but I will attempt to explain them in terms of their meaning rather than simply a barrage of percentages!  For those who wish to skip the statistics I have tried to highlight the main points in bold blue.

A first point to note is that there has been an amount of churn in the panel of observers during the year.  2 observers who were regular reporters have moved on and others were away for periods during the year (in late July none of the regular observers were on deck for a couple of weeks for various reasons).  However, later in the year other s have stepped up and are now reporting regularly.  Thanks folks!

By the end of 2013 we had recorded, over a 7 year period, 183 species in the catchment area of the Gazette.   7 species were observed for the first time in 2013 and by the end of that year year 19 have been recorded in every month since this project started in 2007.  That number has remained constant for 3 years and can probably be taken as the minimum number of resident species..

Over the 7 year period 89 species have been recorded undertaking breeding activity.  7 species were recorded breeding for the first time in 2013.

The number of species observed for the first time or recorded breeding for the first time are shown for each year below.

It is interesting that over a 30 year period the Garden Bird Survey, run by the Canberra Ornithologists Group has recorded 239 species with 108 of these (46.2%) recorded as breeding.  Given the much shorter time span and far fewer observers I think we have, to quote Young Mister Grace, "...all done very well."

In 2013, 154 species were recorded in the study area.  This is 84% of those ever recorded in the area.  This graph shows the number of species recorded per year.

The increase between 2011 and 2013, despite the decline in observer effort in 2013  is in part due to:

• the astonishing variety of birds seen in and near an ephemeral swamp in the Hoskinstown Plain over the Summer of 2012-13.  (That Swamp is now waterless and I expect a decline in future as a result.);
• dry conditions in the inland beginning to send birds from that area to our part of the country in late 2013.  

In 2012 34.7% of the species recorded were observed undertaking some form of breeding activity.  This value is slightly lower than in other years in this area and it is tempting to ascribe this to some attribute of the year (eg the very high rainfall in January - March).  Another possible cause is the inflation of the denominator of this average by a relatively high number of vagrant species

Links to other sections of this report

Breeding Birds
2013 cf 2012
2013 cf previous 6 years