The Scruffy Astronomer

This mind-bending image was taken by @Vincent TC (https://www.facebook.com/VincentTC1971) in the Netherlands a couple of weeks back. I was in two minds about how to present the photo - it was tempting to put it upside down! (Look at the bottom,,,) Vincent was out birding with his camera in bad weather (actually, because of the bad weather!). He got some shots of a Sea-Eagle and a Spoonbill (both different to the species we get here in Australia, of course), but this goose (I think it's a Greylag) landing in very strong wind caused a bit of a stir on Facebook. Consider the following. A bird is flying and suddenly decides to land, effectively dropping vertically to the ground. This might be due to very strong wind, or if there are raptors (or shooters) around. The bird can’t simply dive to the ground, as this would mean it would gain a large amount of speed. Pulling out of a dive like this before hitting the ground would place huge strain on the bird’s wings. The bi...

A little while back, I was visiting my parents in Rosanna (a suburb in Melbourne only a few kilometres from my place). it was a pleasant morning, and we were on the veranda at the back of their house. At some stage in the conversation, a bird began calling. I pricked up my ears, trying to identify the bird. As so often happens, it sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Describing a bird call is a very difficult task. If pushed, I try to find a word that conveys the same sort of general sound as the call. In this case, my guess would be the word "woody", although with the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first. It was repeated in groups of between three and seven, with a short gap between each group. Yeah, I know, not very communicative. My curiosity piqued, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and made a recording of the call. It wasn't a particularly good recording, but there's enough bird and sufficiently low backgroun...

February 2021 brought COVID lockdown 3.0 to Melbourne. For five days, we were required to stay home, only leaving for a few good reasons. So what do you do when you're confined to your house? Well, there's astronomy, but the clouds have been clearing during the day and then returning after sunset. I've set up my rig a couple of times, only to tear it all down after an hour of staring at a starless sky. What else can you do? Gardening, of course. Under lockdown 1.0 and especially 2.0, my garden came to be quite neat. Of course, Harley Rose, our new Labrador puppy hasn't really been good for the garden, unless you regard her as a very enthusiastic rotary hoe. And birding. I was out in the garden yesterday, trimming some plants, when I heard a begging call. It was coming from a thicket of Wattles. Eventually I spotted an Eastern Spinebill feeding a juvenile. By the time I'd retrieved my camera and attached the birding lens, the baby had disappeared, but a young...

The Victorian Alpine country is beautiful, and is recovering from the gigantic fire of 2013, and smaller fires of the last few years. Below the treeline, the fire-ravaged Snowgums are beginning to sprout again, with white, weathered branches standing over round bushes of juvenile growth. Above the treeline, flowers were everywhere - Dandelions waving in the breeze, but also natives - a range of everlastings and the fascinating trigger plants, which breed by whacking bees on their backs with their pollen-laden hammers. Between Diamantina Hut on Mount Hotham and Federation Hut at the base of Mount Feathertop runs a high crooked ridge called the Razorback. Below and to the east, the Diamantina River flows into the Kiewa River. Below and to the west, a maze of creeks arrange themselves into the upper reaches of the Ovens river. In some parts, the ridge is literally two metres across. The track perches precariously on top reminding hikers to stay alert for wind gusts. In sheltered areas, ...

Back in May, I posted about spectrograms . This is a way of recording a bird call (or any sound, for that matter) in a visual way. You can think about it as a pianola roll, only much more detailed. With a bit of practice, you can actually read a spectrogram and "hear" the bird in your mind. You can even pick what sort of bird it is from the shape of the specrotrogram. Here's an example for you to guess. The other day, I was out getting takeaway when I heard a bird call. It's a bird that turns up each year now in Melbourne about this time. It used to be quite a rarity, but as the years get warmer, I'm hearing them nearly very year. It was not far away from me, and the background sound wasn't too loud, so I was able to get a recording on my phone with a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio. When I got home, I used Cornell University's free Raven Lite 2 software to convert my recording to a sonogram.  The sonogram As you can see, the main note - those four black ...

Some of the restrictions on Melburnians have now been relaxed. I hope we're not being too optimistic. But this morning, I found that we're allowed "outdoor photography". Close enough to birding, let's go! I was very twitchy, so I decided to go to Banyule Flats. This is the best birding in my area, mainly due to the variety of habitats found there. Banyule is on a floodplain of the Yarra, just below the confluence of the Plenty River. It has a relatively large lake, extensive reed beds (that provided a Painted Snipe a few years back), a chain of billabongs, riparian trees, open grassland and of course, the Yarra itself. It also has, famously, a couple of Powerful Owl roosts. I've seen lots of Powerful Owls before, but one more would always be good. So when I arrived I made a beeline for the spot (which I'll be vague about...). The long grass around the owl tree had been trampled in places, so I clearly wasn't the first birdo here. It always...

For the past several weeks now - it feels like an eternity - Melbourne has been in what authorities call "Stage 4 lockdown". We are allowed out for one hour per day for exercise, and can go shopping at the local supermarket, but only one at a time. One thing that's not permitted is travelling to a bird watching area and strolling around with camera or binoculars. That's not considered "exercise" and neither is it on the way to the shop. Legally, the only birding I can do is at home. My garden is mostly native, meaning it does attract a number of birds. Numerically, however, visitors are largely Common Mynas and Spotted Dove. At least the Dove is a native. So for something to do during lockdown, I rigged a feeding table in a White Cedar we have.    The White Cedar is beautiful, and has grown very large in the decade we've had it. The disadvantage is that it's severely impinging on my view of the sky, and I can't see to the south-west any longer fo...

The Wilson reserve is right on the Yarra, and opposite the reserve is a large golf course. Being part of the flood plain, there are not many buildings in the area, leaving some space for the birds. There’s a couple of billabongs as well, with plenty of undergrowth to attract small birds.  For many years there was a Powerful Owl roost here. Several years ago I found the local one in an uncomfortable way. I'd ventured out into a meander of the Yarra, where the owl was roosting. It was just after sunset, and I didn't know exactly which tree it used, so I wandered about aimlessly for a while. Eventually I heard the small sounds of the owl as it began moving about. I spotted a shadow in the lower canopy back away from the peninsula, and realised the owl had me cornered with water on three sides. This owl - it had been claimed - had removed the eye of a golfer on the other side of the river a year or two back, so I was a little nervous. As I watched it, the owl flew to a closer tree,...

With the travel restrictions lifted, I decided to go for a couple of nights to Wyperfeld National Park, near Hopetoun in Victoria. It's a pretty hefty drive, and with stops, it took me about seven hours to get there. But if I don't get out of the city regularly I get a bit testy. Wyperfeld hosts the terminal lakes of the Wimmera system, and I've been coming here regularly since 1976, when it was properly flooded. The desert birds here are wonderful, partly because they're different to the ones we see in Melbourne, and partly because they're impressively tenacious. The three birds I wanted to see here are Redthroat, Mallee Emu-wren and Shy Heathwren. All hard birds. Shy Heathwren Mallee Emu-wren Redthroat They're all "allegedly" possible on the Discovery Walk to Lake Brambruk. So early in the morning, I dragged myself out of my tent and set off. The last ridge before Lake Brambruk is the spot. My birding friends call me "Bill the Dipper". I t...

It looks like the restrictions combating the Coronavirus might soon start getting wound back - at least until a second wave of infections comes, I suppose. For the last seven or more weeks schools and many businesses have been shut, and people have been asked not to travel or even go out unless there's a good (and specific) reason. So of course, during this time we haven't been allowed to travel far. For me includes travel for birding as well as astronomy. I like to get out of the city, particularly into the desert, for birds, as well as for general mental health. I'm also pretty regular at the ASV's dark sky site for astrophotography. Instead, I've been walking - normally with Mickey the Labrador - in a number of local parks, all of which are near the Yarra, the river flowing through Melbourne. When the weather is sunny, I sometimes take my birding lens, and I've taken photos of birds I've seen in my travels. None of them are especially rare, but it's n...

People often ask me why the magnification on terrestrial telescopes is lower than on astronomical telescopes. It's because the atmosphere does horrible things to light rays. Have you ever tried looking at something on the ground with a high-magnification telescope, especially on a warm afternoon in summer? You're unlikely to see much at all. Here's a photograph of an aeroplane taking off. It was taken by my mate Paul, and I've shown some of his images before. Notice the trees in the background under the wing on the right? They're pretty clear. However, the trees that should be visible to the left through the jet engine exhaust are very blurred. Air isn't a smooth, consistent medium. It has warm and cold pockets, which act as lenses and distort light passing through. These move around chaotically, and the effect is what we call heat haze. When you magnify the image it becomes quite obvious, with the image moving about. The more magnification, the more obvious it ...

Well, our world is getting smaller. During the Coronavirus restrictions (in Victoria at least) we're requested not to travel unnecessarily. So my birding expeditions are restricted to Hays Paddock or other nearby dog walking parks. I can go to Chelsworth Park in Ivanhoe or up the Koonung Creek trail. I’ve been watching a White-faced Heron over the last couple of weeks. Each morning it patrols two ovals where I walk my dog. The ovals are watered overnight, and this leaves the ground quite wet. In turn, this brings creepy-crawlies to the surface where the Heron can nab them. A week or so back there was a second Heron there, but I’ve only seen the two on a couple of occasions. The same watering regimen seems to attract other grazing birds to the ovals. A couple of weeks ago there was a medium-sized mixed flock Australian White and Straw-necked. Ibis, particularly the White, are famous bin chickens, and in Sydney they’re quite a problem for people eating their lunch in parks. Here in M...

You probably know that every three months I carry out bird surveys at a mate’s property in the Strathbogie ranges. The latest one was last weekend, and was the summer survey. Birdlife Australia has been running its birds on farms data gathering project for a few years now. The idea is twofold.  First, it encourages farmers and other rural people to become citizen scientists. This not only generates data for the project, but also educates the observers so they have a better understanding of the way birds interact with the farmed environment.  This aspect is of benefit to agriculture, as birds are often a good indicator of the health of the local environment. Knowing about the condition of the land can help land managers have healthier and more productive farms. Of course, the second benefit of the project is the generation of data over time. Understanding how bird numbers and diversity changes with weather conditions as well as time of year helps conserve the most critical hab...

Before coming in to work in the mornings, I walk the dog. Mickey the Lab likes to go to different places, and we decided to go to the Koonung Creek park, along the Eastern Freeway. It was a bright day, so I took my birding lens with me as well. The park is adjacent to the freeway, and so can be quite noisy in places, but that hasn't seemed to put the birds off. The place was quite busy that day. The grass at the western end where we began is interspersed with onion weed. Corellas, particularly Long-Billed, like to dig the corms up. I've written about these before. However, Galahs and Crested Pigeons favour this area as well. Because it was morning and we were walking roughly eastward, I didn't begin really looking for birds until after we turned back. There's little point photographing into the sun. The eastern end of the park is narrow and close to the freeway, and this is where it is noisiest. I've heard that birds who live in noisy areas tend to sing poorly, but ...