| In this edition we cover: Farmers in Focus - Kean Sugden and Jasmine Tothill Owls and Owl-like Night Birds of Denmark Inlet Update Rainfall Update On Farm composting & multispecies pastures Controlling Arum Lily Kean Sugden and Jasmine Tothill own a hobby farm in the Scotsdale sub catchment with a year around creek running through the property. After taking on the property they realised soon that the cattle were destroying their creek and dam. They approached WICC to help them revegetate about 2 hectares of paddocks. Because of the high number of roos, everything had to be tree guarded. They dedicated most of their winter weekends in 2019 to planting out 6865 native seedlings across 22 species. WICC recently caught up with them to have a look at their reveg and get some advice for other landholders thinking of doing something similar. Before revegetation (August 2019) 4 years later! take a walk through WICC: Your reveg looks fantastic. What encouraged you to do it? Kean and Jasmine: It wasn't looking healthy. The cows were getting in there and trashing the remnant vegetation, creek and dam. We wanted to create habitat as well. So everything was more natural. WICC: What have you noticed? Kean and Jasmine: A lot more animals are here now. A lot more birds, definitely a lot more bird variety. Also the creeks are running a lot cleaner. There is a perennial creek that runs through the property. The dam is now really clear and it wasn’t before. Definitely less erosion. The native vegetation is coming back without the cattle in there. WICC: And you planted all of this yourselves. What is your advice to other landholders thinking of doing something similar? Kean and Jasmine: Take up the offer of free help from WICC. We didn’t realise what a big job it was going to be. Tree guarding takes about 3 times longer than not using tree guards. The roos loved the seedlings. Especially the sword grass and sheoaks. If we hadn’t used tree guards we would have lost the lot. Also if we did it again we wouldn’t be as concerned with spacing as we were. Just get in in there and let nature sort it out. But we just love it. We take a walk through now and again. It has really created a beautiful space for our native animals. WICC: Would you do it again? Jasmine: Yes! Kean: After seeing this… yes. If you asked me while we were doing it… No! Once again Nullaki (Wilson Inlet) is connected to the ocean. June recorded record rainfall of over 300 mm in Denmark and the inlet’s water level rose steadily by 1.3 m for 3 weeks. The sandbar was opened on the 29 June 2023. At the time of opening the inlet’s water level was approximately 1.27 mAHD. By Friday 30 June, the outgoing flow had scoured the bar to a width of about 100 m. About 27 GL of water was discharged into the ocean in the first 24 hours after opening, a little less than during the last opening in 2021. Imagery of the opening was captured by Department of Water and Environmental Regulation staff members, Cassie Paxman and Alex Burgoyne. Check out the latest video on the 2023 sandbar opening. Click for the latest inlet monitoring data: The passage of cold fronts at the start and latter half of June brought moderate to heavy daily rainfall totals resulting in several rainfall records being broken. Many sites between Walpole and Esperance had their wettest June on record and this was the wettest June across the SW Land Division since 2019. July on the other hand was the driest on record since 2012. Looking ahead the Indian Ocean Dipole is expected to trend positive resulting in a 60% - 80% chance of below median rainfall for southern WA (BoM). Barn Owl photo by Tim Gamblin Owls and Owl-like Night Birds of Denmark I’ve had a few queries about owls and other nocturnal birds recently. Which ones we have down here, are frogmouths owls? That sort of thing. I’ll answer what I can and hope that the content is satisfactory for the eagle-eyed Denmark Bird Group. I can rely on more than a generic and brief google search to answer these queries as I fortunately have some experience working closely with predatory birds, including owls and frogmouths. In a previous lifetime before mobile phones and fast internet, I worked as a zookeeper in the Northern Territory. My core role was to train raptors using falconer methods for public display and education. We flew native and local species; kites, eagles, osprey, falcons, pacific bazas, buzzards and owls. Other than an owl’s astonishing beauty at close quarters, I was impressed by their almost entirely silent flight – even when ghosting just over your head. This is their key adaptation for hunting. Some species such as the falcon opt for speed and are thus considerably louder when flying. The kites are highly agile and intelligent problem solvers, ospreys have specific adaptations for a fish diet, the bazas and buzzards have unique behaviours to obtain food, but owls have silent flight, great hearing, and excellent low light vision. Often, if I was distracted at work, an owl could land on my glove without me noticing, whereas the other species made a flapping or whooshing sound as they approached. Next time you find a feather look closely; if it is broad, has frayed edges and is very soft to the touch, it may be an owl feather. This design cuts out the noise of air turbulence, but the minus is reduced speed. Slow flight however may not necessarily be a disadvantage if their prey can’t hear them approaching. Also, many owls (but most pronounced in the barn owl) have a wide disc shaped head. This arrangement of feathers acts like a radar dish, funnelling sound into their ears and enabling them to can catch prey without being seen on a dark night. Their ears are also offset, meaning they can use them to triangulate where their prey is. That is, they can detect the minute difference in time as the noise travels between their ears, to locate the source more precisely. Then of course there are the iconic large eyes which face forward like human eyes, allowing for stereo or binocular vision (unlike some species which have them on the side of the head). Binocular vision enables ability to gauge distance when hunting. Owl’s eyes may also have contributed to the ‘wise old owl’ trope. In my experience they’re not that wise. It’s a shame to bust that myth but their intelligence seems at best the same or to be honest in my experience even less than other birds, with perhaps the exception of the emu. However, if you can hunt well and breed there is no need to be as clever as a kite, a parrot or a raven. In fact, some owls (such as the barn owl) are considered to be one of the most successful species of bird on the planet, having an ability to live in most habitats and able to adapt to urbanisation. Their eyesight is twice as good as humans at night and very sensitive to movement. As a side note they also produce pellets of indigestible material (bones/feathers etc); when found, these indicate the presence of owls but additionally when analysed can show what prey they’ve been eating, even over decades or more. A friend and I found a huge deep pile of pellets in a cave in the Great Sandy Desert. They must have been accumulating there for a long time. The WA Museum discovered that the pellets had bones of extinct species of native rodents in them. Sad but fascinating these pellets acting as time capsules. Tawny Frogmouth photo by Tim Gamblin Our local tawny frogmouths are nocturnal, quiet-flying and large eyed - but are not owls. It’s all in the feet and talons. Owls use their strong feet and sharp curved talons to grab prey whereas frogmouths use their beaks. If you ever come across an injured owl, eagle or kite, always watch the feet. That’s where the danger lies; their beaks are relatively benign. The frogmouths are well camouflaged and can strike poses that resemble parts of branches. This is why they don’t need to shelter in tree hollows as the owls and owlet night jars do. They make a curious ‘oom, oom, oom’ call. Frogmouths are more closely related to owlet nightjars (our other owl-like night bird). They can be seen in Denmark, especially when driving at night. Owlet nightjars are small and though their non reflective eyes face forward, they don’t have the facial disc of owls and like frogmouths hunt with their beaks. Their call is a series of loud more abrupt and sometimes startling ‘yapps’ and ‘churs’. Owlet Nightjar photo by Simon Cherriman Our other local true owl is of course the commonly heard southern boobook. It makes a call closer to the children’s storybook owl ‘hoot hoot’ though more like ‘boo-book’ than the sometimes disturbing ‘screech’ of the barn owl. The second note is lower in pitch. They are smaller than the barn owl and although they can eat small mammals, will focus more on large insects and arachnids. They are not as strictly nocturnal as the Barn Owl and can be seen at dawn and dusk (crepuscular). Boobook Owl photo by Simon Cherriman You can listen to all these calls online; I recommend our local Owl Friendly Rodenticide Action Group from Margaret River as a good starting point: https://owlfriendly.org.au/about-us/. They are campaigning to address the dangerous threat of rodenticide poisoning to owls and other wildlife in the southwest. Soil Wise Workshops A paddock walk at the Denmark Ag College allowed us to test out some monitoring techniques. A good crowd of local farmers attended 2 full-day workshops around Denmark, as part of a series funded by the Soil Wise program. An on-farm composting workshop in June was presented by former Denmark local and agro-ecologist Mark Tupman. Mark gave us a crash course in the theory of different types of composting, troubleshooting and what to look for, and what not to do. After lunch, we built a Johnson Su composting system by layering old hay and silage, prunings, various animal manures and two dead chickens. This system |
In this edition we cover:
- Farmers in Focus - Kean Sugden and Jasmine Tothill
- Owls and Owl-like Night Birds of Denmark
- Inlet Update
- Rainfall Update
- On Farm composting & multispecies pastures
- Controlling Arum Lily
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Kean Sugden and Jasmine Tothill own a hobby farm in the Scotsdale sub catchment with a year around creek running through the property. After taking on the property they realised soon that the cattle were destroying their creek and dam. They approached WICC to help them revegetate about 2 hectares of paddocks. Because of the high number of roos, everything had to be tree guarded. They dedicated most of their winter weekends in 2019 to planting out 6865 native seedlings across 22 species.
WICC recently caught up with them to have a look at their reveg and get some advice for other landholders thinking of doing something similar.
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Before revegetation (August 2019) | |
WICC: Your reveg looks fantastic. What encouraged you to do it?
Kean and Jasmine: It wasn't looking healthy. The cows were getting in there and trashing the remnant vegetation, creek and dam. We wanted to create habitat as well. So everything was more natural.
WICC: What have you noticed?
Kean and Jasmine: A lot more animals are here now. A lot more birds, definitely a lot more bird variety. Also the creeks are running a lot cleaner. There is a perennial creek that runs through the property. The dam is now really clear and it wasn’t before. Definitely less erosion. The native vegetation is coming back without the cattle in there.
WICC: And you planted all of this yourselves. What is your advice to other landholders thinking of doing something similar?
Kean and Jasmine: Take up the offer of free help from WICC. We didn’t realise what a big job it was going to be. Tree guarding takes about 3 times longer than not using tree guards. The roos loved the seedlings. Especially the sword grass and sheoaks. If we hadn’t used tree guards we would have lost the lot. Also if we did it again we wouldn’t be as concerned with spacing as we were. Just get in in there and let nature sort it out. But we just love it. We take a walk through now and again. It has really created a beautiful space for our native animals.
WICC: Would you do it again?
Jasmine: Yes!
Kean: After seeing this… yes. If you asked me while we were doing it… No!
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Once again Nullaki (Wilson Inlet) is connected to the ocean. June recorded record rainfall of over 300 mm in Denmark and the inlet’s water level rose steadily by 1.3 m for 3 weeks. The sandbar was opened on the 29 June 2023. At the time of opening the inlet’s water level was approximately 1.27 mAHD. By Friday 30 June, the outgoing flow had scoured the bar to a width of about 100 m. About 27 GL of water was discharged into the ocean in the first 24 hours after opening, a little less than during the last opening in 2021. | |
Imagery of the opening was captured by Department of Water and Environmental Regulation staff members, Cassie Paxman and Alex Burgoyne. Check out the latest video on the 2023 sandbar opening.
| |
The passage of cold fronts at the start and latter half of June brought moderate to heavy daily rainfall totals resulting in several rainfall records being broken. Many sites between Walpole and Esperance had their wettest June on record and this was the wettest June across the SW Land Division since 2019. July on the other hand was the driest on record since 2012.
Looking ahead the Indian Ocean Dipole is expected to trend positive resulting in a 60% - 80% chance of below median rainfall for southern WA (BoM).
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Barn Owl photo by Tim Gamblin | |
Owls and Owl-like Night Birds of Denmark I’ve had a few queries about owls and other nocturnal birds recently. Which ones we have down here, are frogmouths owls? That sort of thing. I’ll answer what I can and hope that the content is satisfactory for the eagle-eyed Denmark Bird Group.
I can rely on more than a generic and brief google search to answer these queries as I fortunately have some experience working closely with predatory birds, including owls and frogmouths. In a previous lifetime before mobile phones and fast internet, I worked as a zookeeper in the Northern Territory. My core role was to train raptors using falconer methods for public display and education. We flew native and local species; kites, eagles, osprey, falcons, pacific bazas, buzzards and owls.
Other than an owl’s astonishing beauty at close quarters, I was impressed by their almost entirely silent flight – even when ghosting just over your head. This is their key adaptation for hunting. Some species such as the falcon opt for speed and are thus considerably louder when flying. The kites are highly agile and intelligent problem solvers, ospreys have specific adaptations for a fish diet, the bazas and buzzards have unique behaviours to obtain food, but owls have silent flight, great hearing, and excellent low light vision. Often, if I was distracted at work, an owl could land on my glove without me noticing, whereas the other species made a flapping or whooshing sound as they approached. Next time you find a feather look closely; if it is broad, has frayed edges and is very soft to the touch, it may be an owl feather. This design cuts out the noise of air turbulence, but the minus is reduced speed. Slow flight however may not necessarily be a disadvantage if their prey can’t hear them approaching. Also, many owls (but most pronounced in the barn owl) have a wide disc shaped head. This arrangement of feathers acts like a radar dish, funnelling sound into their ears and enabling them to can catch prey without being seen on a dark night. Their ears are also offset, meaning they can use them to triangulate where their prey is. That is, they can detect the minute difference in time as the noise travels between their ears, to locate the source more precisely. Then of course there are the iconic large eyes which face forward like human eyes, allowing for stereo or binocular vision (unlike some species which have them on the side of the head). Binocular vision enables ability to gauge distance when hunting. Owl’s eyes may also have contributed to the ‘wise old owl’ trope. In my experience they’re not that wise. It’s a shame to bust that myth but their intelligence seems at best the same or to be honest in my experience even less than other birds, with perhaps the exception of the emu. However, if you can hunt well and breed there is no need to be as clever as a kite, a parrot or a raven. In fact, some owls (such as the barn owl) are considered to be one of the most successful species of bird on the planet, having an ability to live in most habitats and able to adapt to urbanisation. Their eyesight is twice as good as humans at night and very sensitive to movement. As a side note they also produce pellets of indigestible material (bones/feathers etc); when found, these indicate the presence of owls but additionally when analysed can show what prey they’ve been eating, even over decades or more. A friend and I found a huge deep pile of pellets in a cave in the Great Sandy Desert. They must have been accumulating there for a long time. The WA Museum discovered that the pellets had bones of extinct species of native rodents in them. Sad but fascinating these pellets acting as time capsules.
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Tawny Frogmouth photo by Tim Gamblin | |
Our local tawny frogmouths are nocturnal, quiet-flying and large eyed - but are not owls. It’s all in the feet and talons. Owls use their strong feet and sharp curved talons to grab prey whereas frogmouths use their beaks. If you ever come across an injured owl, eagle or kite, always watch the feet. That’s where the danger lies; their beaks are relatively benign. The frogmouths are well camouflaged and can strike poses that resemble parts of branches. This is why they don’t need to shelter in tree hollows as the owls and owlet night jars do. They make a curious ‘oom, oom, oom’ call. Frogmouths are more closely related to owlet nightjars (our other owl-like night bird). They can be seen in Denmark, especially when driving at night. Owlet nightjars are small and though their non reflective eyes face forward, they don’t have the facial disc of owls and like frogmouths hunt with their beaks. Their call is a series of loud more abrupt and sometimes startling ‘yapps’ and ‘churs’.
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Owlet Nightjar photo by Simon Cherriman | |
Our other local true owl is of course the commonly heard southern boobook. It makes a call closer to the children’s storybook owl ‘hoot hoot’ though more like ‘boo-book’ than the sometimes disturbing ‘screech’ of the barn owl. The second note is lower in pitch. They are smaller than the barn owl and although they can eat small mammals, will focus more on large insects and arachnids. They are not as strictly nocturnal as the Barn Owl and can be seen at dawn and dusk (crepuscular). | |
Boobook Owl photo by Simon Cherriman | |
You can listen to all these calls online; I recommend our local Owl Friendly Rodenticide Action Group from Margaret River as a good starting point: https://owlfriendly.org.au/about-us/. They are campaigning to address the dangerous threat of rodenticide poisoning to owls and other wildlife in the southwest. | |
A paddock walk at the Denmark Ag College allowed us to test out some monitoring techniques. | |
A good crowd of local farmers attended 2 full-day workshops around Denmark, as part of a series funded by the Soil Wise program.
An on-farm composting workshop in June was presented by former Denmark local and agro-ecologist Mark Tupman. Mark gave us a crash course in the theory of different types of composting, troubleshooting and what to look for, and what not to do. After lunch, we built a Johnson Su composting system by layering old hay and silage, prunings, various animal manures and two dead chickens. This system is very low maintenance and doesn’t require turning, since it includes several “chimneys” to ensure good airflow. The host farmers, the Cook-Allen family, report that the compost prepared at the workshop has already reduced to a third of its original size and looks & smells pretty good! This type of compost can take up to 6 months to mature, but is easy to construct and quite forgiving for composting beginners.
The following month, we heard from UWA Emeritus Professor Lyn Abbott, a soil life expert, and Grant Sims, a Victorian cropping and livestock farmer who has embraced multi-species cropping, growing a range of cover crops for grazing, and also runs a multi-species seed business Down Under Covers. Grant is a scientist on his own farm both using his own experience and consulting world-leading experts to select multi-species combinations that improve soils, provide excellent live weight gains to livestock and help farmers become more profitable. Grant’s photos of his own farm, crops and cattle were extremely convincing.
Lyn gave an overview of plant-soil relationships and an introduction to her free Soil Health app (search “SOILHEALTH” in your app store). The app contains a lifetime of knowledge and is sure to be a valuable resource for farmers considering their using their soil biology to change plant physiology, contribute to nutrient replacement and reduce input costs.
Grant explained that, by promoting plant health using the appropriate nutrients and minerals, providing beneficial microbes and multi-species planting, he has been able to eliminate the need for fungicides and insecticides on his own farm. Since Grant has stopped using insecticides, the number of predatory insects has grown, as evidenced by the number of spiders seen on the harvester. Now Grant says “if I see an aphid or a red leg, I say – good luck! It’s a jungle out there.”
Grant also touched on many valuable, practical tips and tricks that he has learned along the way; highlighting the importance of “farmers helping farmers” and acknowledging that solutions also must be practical to succeed.
Many reported that they found the workshops very useful, with one local farmer commenting at the end of the day – “If only I had known this 40 years ago.” We look forward to seeing farmers implementing the ideas shared on the courses – please let us know if you’re introducing composting or growing multispecies pastures, we’d love to hear how it’s going.
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Grant Sims from Down Under Covers shares his practical farming experiences - drawing on 6 generations of farming history.
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Cartoon by Claudia Simpson | |
The Owingup Kent Grower Group (OKGG) met recently at the Kentdale Hall to explore options to control arum lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica). Another South African escapee, arum lilies thrive in wet areas and if left unmanaged will quickly form a monoculture outcompeting native plants. Declared as a pest species on the West Australian Organisms List, landholders are legally required to control arum lilies under the Biosecurity and Agriculture Management Act 2007. Arum lilies are toxic to stock and deaths have occurred in WA.
Carl Dusenberg, from Dusenberg Land Garden and Environment Services, informed the OKGG that arum lily thrives in Southwest WA because we lack the checks and balances that mitigates their proliferation in their native South Africa. Lilies are often spread by birds and to a lesser degree waterways. Carl said that arum lily can be controlled manually or chemically. Manual control can be carried out at any time of the year. You must ensure that you dig out the entire tuber and dispose of it, preferably by burning.
Chemical control is best carried out from July to November. Carl recommends to use the Bradley Method, focussing on the outliers in your infestation first and then working towards the main infestation. This will help keep your unaffected areas arum lily free. It is also handy to make a map of your property so you can record your infestation and control efforts as it can be difficult to remember what you sprayed the year before. If the herbicide label and reputable guides such as Herbiguide or Florabase are adhered to, good results are often achieved. Make sure you follow up every year as the lily will reshoot from the tuber. If sprayed again in year two you will notice the benefits in the third year. Be persistent and you will best the arum lily beast.
Metsulphuron with an added surfactant such as Pulse is the most efficient chemical control. If you don’t use a surfactant you are wasting your time and chemicals. Near waterways keep all sprays to a pencil beam to ensure maximum product is applied to the leaves instead of off target and in the water. Some landholders have found it handy to use dye or paint to mark which lilies that have sprayed to ensure they hit everything.
This program is funded in part by the Western Australian State Natural Resource Management Program. For further information visit www.wicc.org.au.
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