Among the best indications that we’re going to get rain is that our pink Storm Lilies begin to flower. The flowers above are Zephyranthes grandiflora and they’re a small bulb that flowers when the air strain drops. It doesn’t matter how a lot water you give them to encourage flowers, as a result of a storm is required earlier than they flower. We even have white Rain Lilies Pancratium zeylanicum that additionally rely on the air strain altering to flower.
White Rain Lily
As you may see, each species of bulbs are flowering and there’s a good cause for that. The primary few days of 2023 have been extraordinarily moist in Broome and surrounding areas and we have now come off it flippantly on the town actually. I do know I recommended you could come and explore Australia, however it actually does rely on the place you wish to go and when. A really dependable supply of data for the highways in Western Australia is the Main Roads Travel Map. The north of Western Australia is now not accessible by street attributable to unprecedented flooding.
Fitzroy Crossing particularly has suffered probably the most in the previous few days with the town flooded and the bridge severely broken. The river top reached 15.81m and the river top gauge then failed, however the water stage is slowly dropping because it strikes additional downstream in the direction of Langi Crossing after which the ocean. When you can think about the Low Level Crossing with an additional 15.81 metres of water top then you may perceive it’s lots of further water. The rain doesn’t must fall in a city {that a} river runs by way of for it to flood. The river catchment space is huge and it’ll proceed to move for a lot of months now providing some critical challenges to the bridge structural engineers.
Broome has acquired lots of rain these previous couple of days, however we at the moment are beginning to dry out. Broome climate statistics are a imply common rainfall of 194.1mm for the entire of January, which is our wettest month usually. Our imply common is 627.6mm for the entire 12 months. These records are from 1939 until 2022, however they are going to be adjusted after what we have now simply acquired. We’ve got simply had 565.4mm of rain within the first 6 days of January.
Broome rainfall
Tropical Cyclone Ellie had dropped to be an ex-cyclone, however she sat over Broome for just a few days displaying us that Mom Nature is in cost. Though it’s a bit depressing having to remain inside watching your grass develop underwater it’s much more depressing for the birds. For 2 days we didn’t see or hear birds aside from Oriental Pratincoles that by some means managed to combat the wind and feed. On Friday, when the wind dropped, there have been lots of them simply sat on the roads clearly exhausted.
There are excellent storm drains round Broome and the entire rainwater goes into large ditches after which is managed to exit into Roebuck Bay. Nonetheless, it’s lots of water to clear and it’s nonetheless slowly transferring by way of the drainage methods. Our blue sea has develop into a muddy color for apparent causes.
Storm water drains
Australian White Ibis in a storm water drain
The Plumed Whistling-Geese have dispersed and we’re listening to them overhead now they usually have loads of locations to face round in muddy water now.
Plumed Whistling-Geese
The Masked Lapwings have been breeding and their younger are having to take care of extra puddles than they might usually should.
Masked Lapwing chick
The Willie Wagtail is hardly standing nonetheless because it chases the flying ants and flits about continuously.
Willie Wagtail
As quickly as we heard birds coming into our backyard on Friday morning round 5.30am I went out to provide them some meals. That they had actually had a troublesome couple of days and something we may do to assist we might. There have been quickly a few dozen very hungry Double-barred Finch within the backyard together with Bar-shouldered Doves.
Double-barred Finch
We’ve got been searching for one in every of our Tawny Frogmouth households that also had young at Christmas and are but to seek out them. Little question they’ve been watching us and we hope to determine the place they’re now roosting. The Tawny Frogmouth that’s blind in a single eye stays in the midst of the dense tree in the midst of a roundabout and was clearly a bit drained after the entire rain.
Tawny Frogmouth having a yawn!
So, though we had a great day birding round Broome observing 113 hen species on January 1st we at the moment are restricted on the place we journey till the water stage subsides. We are able to count on the freeway south to supply excellent birding opportunities as soon as we’re allowed to journey on it once more.
We are able to count on extra rain within the coming weeks and months, as a result of that is our “Moist Season”, however no one was actually anticipating fairly this a lot rain!
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