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Date: Friday November 8th 2024

Project:ÌýEastern Australian Waterbird Survey

°¿²ú²õ±ð°ù±¹±ð°ù²õ: Richard Kingsford (UNSW), John Porter (NSW DPE)

±Ê¾±±ô´Ç³Ù: Thomas Clark

Swan Hill lies on the River Murray and a key place for us to stay once we have finished the surveys of the Kerang Lakes.Ìý

Here the River Murray is slow and sinuous as it snakes through the farming land on either side.Ìý

River Murray

We soon flew up above the clouds to pick up the tailwinds in this direct flight to Sydney, given we had finished all our aerial survey.Ìý

Heading home, above clouds

It was a pretty smooth flight until we got close to the Blue Mountains where the wind started buffet the aeroplane. On the way over the mountains, we flew of Sydney’s main water supply, Warragamba Dam.Ìý

Warragamba Dam

We then landed at Bankstown Airport. It was great to finish the 2024 aerial survey of waterbirds, over almost a month and a half. We had covered large distances, as usual, particularly comprehensive across the Murray-Darling Basin. The survey provides the most comprehensive assessment of a key wetland indicator, the waterbirds, with the surveys tracking changes over time. This year we successfully added a whole system to our aerial surveys, the Coongie Lakes on Cooper Creek, northwest of Innamincka. It was definitely one of the highlights, a real hot spot for waterbirds.Ìý

The overall impression from the survey was that the environment was certainly starting to get a lot dryer than in the previous couple of wet years. This means waterbirds are more concentrated on the major lake systems where they capitalise on shallow waters as the lakes dry. There is still lots of waterbird habitat throughout the area we surveyed.Ìý

The job is still not done. Our team in the office has been feverishly entering all the data so that it can all be brought together over a few weeks. There is still lots to check. Given the amount of data, we collect on more than 50 species on up to 2000 wetlands, then there are always big quality assurance processes to come in. This includes making sure that the track the plane takes over the wetlands matches with the audio data from our audio recorders. It is particularly important to make sure that all of the locations line up. On survey, we are also able to correct some points which might have found themselves in the wrong place. We are constantly improving the data entry and quality assurance.Ìý

Luckily, we have great systems, reducing human error on all fronts. We always aim to deliver a summary report to governments by early December which is subsequently made publicly available.Ìý