Day with family today after deserting them all day yesterday. Once again I did no birding at all, which is poor form – really I should have done a 5-min point count or something. I made up for it by spending a few minutes on the GIS (Geographic Information System) working out the shape of the offshore portion of the Brisbane LGA. Want to know why? Read Rule 7. The map is below – so far I’ve only done a coarse version, and I will refine this later. But a few interesting features are immediately apparent.

Because of Moreton Island and the shape of the mainland coast north of Brisbane, the LGA flares into the ocean, and encompasses a huge swathe of the continental shelf, albeit well south of where the Sunshine Coast pelagic usually goes. I don’t think there are any regular pelagic trips into the offshore Brisbane area – please let me know if you know otherwise. Elliot Leach and I are hoping to organise one or two pelagic trips in Brisbane waters this year – they used to happen years ago, and there’s presumably plenty of good birds out there. The journey out to the shelf will be a little longer than the Sunshine or Gold Coast pelagics, but certainly doable at least a couple of times this year.

I’m not expecting to do much birding in the next few days as I’ve got heaps on at work. Hopefully no more rarities will show up!

With no year ticks today, my year list at the end of the day remained on 222 species. I spent 0 minutes birding, walked 0 km and drove 0 km.

Offshore Brisbane LGA – the border flares out because of Moreton Island, and a substantial length of continental shelf is in Brisbane LGA.