Nankeen Night Heron

This post is a summary of observations of Nankeen Night Heron in the Stoney Creek Gazette circulation area (hereafter Carwoola) and the rest of the COG Area of Interest (COGAOI).

Here is an image of the species, taken from a lounge-room window in Pony Place!

Carwoola records

I have not retained details of exactly who reported this species or where the birds were seen, so the next map is from my memory.

The group of 3 yellow pins are in the Whiskers Creek area and the red one is the Molonglo River Park, where the bird has been seen twice in the last two weeks.

.The bird was not exactly posing for a selfie, but with this species you get what you can.  Peering closely the white belly can be seen as well as the rufous back.

Over the 8 years we have been here the species has been recorded 10 times (counting my observation this morning.  the records were in 2007 (observed in 1 month); 2009 (1) 2011 (1) 2012 (1) 2013 (4) 2014 (1) and 2015 (1 so far).  Of the older observations they were all in November or December, except for 2013 when they were spread through the year.  

COGAOI

The charts etc below have been taken from the excellent COG Bird Info pages.  Some of the charts come from the pages accessed by hitting the "more detail button - this delivers 12 pages rather than 2 so is ~2Mb and thus might be avoided if on a tight data budget.  COG ask that this quality statement accompany any use of the data:

These data were collected by amateur bird watchers using various survey methods. Note that on some occasions more than one person may have recorded bird sightings on the same day.

In most years the species is rather hard to find   This is reflected in the chart on reporting rate (click the image to get a larger version):

The most outstanding aspect of this is the very pronounced upkick in 2012/13, which nicely matches our experience.

In terms of seasonality there are very few reports in Autumn or Winter.  The Spring/Summer situation is covered by this image.

The bigger the dot, the higher the reporting rate.  The willow enriched banks of the Molonglo seem to be a popular sighting habitat - just like our experience.

Received wisdom used to be that the birds observed in the COG AOI were generally immature birds dispersing from breeding sites elsewhere.  The next image (taken from the second Atlas of Australian Birds shows the broad location of breeding records. 

The nearest sites to Canberra/Carwoola would appear to be on the Murray - presumably the lakes and swamps around Kerang.  The small circle chart suggests that the most likely time of year is about now, especially assuming that our extra altitude would cause a delay in the season.