Waterbird Number update for the last week in February 2014

Rainer Ebel

Well, we ended February with the last weekly survey on the last day of the month. One might consider this survey rather convenient since it neatly packages the month and the surveys so far.  Also, the survey was exciting from a species perspective since we identified and added two new species for the golf course annotated species list, which is still in progress.  The newbies was the Cattle Egret and Nankeen Night Heron.; more on those species later.

The charted the weekly average number of waterbirds per hectare since 16 January at Sanctuary Cove is presented in Figure 1. Both Wendy and I concluded after our seven-hour run-around-the–golf-course-survey that the waterbird numbers over all were rather low; in fact lower than previous surveys. What a surprise, how wrong we were.  While waterbird numbers declined somewhat from the 16 to the 23 January, they did an about face until the 9 Feb. Following the dip a week later on the 14 Feb waterbirds have been steady increasing.  The waterbird density on both Sanctuary golf courses is over 30.50 birds per hectare for February approximately 11 percent over the previous month.  On a 175.25-hectare golf course ponds make up 25.22 hectares leaving a bit of room for clubs and carts.

The large j7, j8 ponds appear to harbor the most birds on the Palms golf course while on the Pines GC the Clubhouse pond (d1) and the 11,12, & 13th Frwy (d9) Pond not only attract the numbers of waterbirds but also the seem to have the most diverse ground of birds loathing there pond margins.

Why the two dips, one at the end of January and the other during mid February is open for speculation.  All that I can state with certainty is that our methods are constant and the results are consistent from survey to survey.

There is a resident population hidden somewhere in our results. What the percentage might be in our weekly counts is subject to interpretation but more discoveries are needed.  These answers will come evident as we begin to capture and mark individuals in the various species groups.  For now we can just say that there are birds moving onto the golf course as there are birds leaving perhaps due to local or regional weather patterns, food, cover and fresh water availability.  I also believe that this golf course has become an attractive site for moulting Long-billed and Little corellas, Hardhead, and other duck species. This may be the only role that this golf course play for a number of waterbird species. 

Another interesting observation is with the high numbers of Eurasian Coot, Purple Swamphen, Dusky Moorhen, Australian Wood Duck, and Black Swan, few if any, off spring are observed and if present, they never appear to reach maturity.