Whole Club, 17- 19 October 2025
Back row left to right: Lucy, Clare, John and Jolanda. Front row left to right: Robyn, Ry and James.
– Image by Roman Mandeczewsky
For this excursion, we had a goal to do a bat survey on the island, as I don’t think we had ever done one of these before. Ry Beaver volunteered to come to the island with his bat detector equipment: one Echo Meter Touch to record bat calls in real time, one passive acoustic recorder, which you can leave overnight at a location and view the recordings on your laptop the next day, and a night vision monocular to see animals moving about in the dark. One of the attending members (Robyn Devenish) also brought their own Echo Meter Touch with a tablet.
Eight of us arrived on Friday morning (Roman and Lucy Mandeczewsky, Jolanda Keeble, Ry Beaver, Robyn Devenish, James Mumme, John Abbott and Clare Caldeira). After lunch, we went out for a walk north and east of our field studies centre. Don Poynton dropped in for a couple of hours as he was on a kayaking excursion with friends and they’d had morning tea at the Mill. As it was springtime, I’d expected to see many flowering plants, and I was not disappointed. I managed to put names to many of them and even took a few photos. It was fairly hot (26 degrees C) and a bit windy, so the birds were relatively quiet.
One of our very first encounters was a small flock of Splendid Fairywrens who were inhabiting the samphire flats behind the house. It is always a pleasure to do this walk as there is something to see for everyone. We returned around 2 o’clock and recorded our observations.
Splendid Fairywren – Image by Ry Beaver
Late in the afternoon, we went for a walk to the Mill and saw a nesting Tawny Frogmouth, as well as several water birds, including a Common Sandpiper.
Tawny Frogmouth – Image by Ry Beaver
After returning to the house, we went out with Ry to put up the passive acoustic recorder. Just after dusk, we all went out with the bat recording equipment and walked for an hour along the foreshore to see if we could hear and/or record any bats and other wildlife.
We saw a Brush-tailed Possum and captured several bat calls with the recorders. Back at the house, Ry examined the recordings and informed us that we had Gould’s Wattled Bats and White-striped Free-tailed Bats. The passive bat recorder also picked up an unidentified Long-eared Bat species.
The next morning, Robyn and James left, and two other members arrived (Medha Tiwari and Nick Smith). We went for another walk, this time east along the foreshore, then north across the width of the island, and east, following the shoreline, until we arrived back at the house. An interesting walk through various habitats, including wetland vegetation, sandy plains with Kunzeas, woodlands dominated by Allocasuarinas, and planted pine trees. We encountered numerous birds and discovered various plant and invertebrate species. We arrived back at the house for a late lunch, and then Nick and Medha went home.
In the late afternoon, we went for another walk, tracking north across the island and then west towards the Mill. We had hoped to do a loop around the west side of the island, but there was an inlet just before we arrived at the Mill, so we had to turn around and retraced our steps back the way we came. Ry attached the passive acoustic recorder to the veranda post before dusk, and after dinner, the two of us went out for another bat walk.
This time, the bats were not staying around but flew by very fast. The wind was picking up, and the forecast was for rain during the night. We didn’t get any rain, but on Sunday morning, it came down heavily. Ry and I checked the acoustic recorder, and there were 24 Gould’s Wattled Bat calls recorded (one very loud and thus nearby) and one other bat call, possibly a South-western Free-tailed Bat.
After breakfast, we packed our gear, cleaned the house, locked it up and left for home. Although the trip ended wet, the excursion was a success with four bat species recorded, 89 plant species (including 28 weeds), 48 bird species, one mammal, one marsupial, five spiders and related species (kangaroo tick), three butterflies, two moths, numerous mosquitoes, one dragonfly and one damselfly.
Jolanda Keeble