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The Birding Event of the Year!

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The Birding Event of the Year! The birding event of the year! Hosted by BirdLife Warrnambool from 4-9 October 2014 The Congress will be held in Portland Victoria 4-5 October and the Campout will take place in Nelson from 6-9 October. To Portland for the Congress 4-5 October The congress is in Portland Victoria, the state’s oldest European settlement and the main urban centre in the Shire of Glenelg located on Portland Bay. For more information on accommodation i the Portland area please visit the following link. http://www.visitportland.com.au/ Australasian Gannet, Glenn Ehmke To Nelson for the Campout 6-9 October Nelson is located at the mouth of the Glenelg River, 90 kilometres west of Portland, the charming fishing village of Nelson is one of south-west Victoria’s premier birding destinations. With the Southern Ocean, the Glenelg River estuary, Discovery Bay Coastal Park and the forests of the Lower Glenelg National Park all within a stone’s throw, the local birdlife is as prolific and varied as the habitats. It’s an area where you can start the day spotting albatross and Hooded Plover and finish it off with Australasian Bittern, Crested Shrike-tit and Powerful Owl. There will be a car pooling roster drafted, so let us know if you need a lift to the campout. Nelson Estuary, Charlotte Davis Accommodation is available in Nelson in cabins, caravan sites and camping sites at Kywong Caravan Park or Casuarina Cabins. There is a bed and breakfast at Nelson Cottage and motel units at Pinehaven Motel and Nelson Hotel. For more Info around the area http://www.nelsonvictoria.com.au/directory.html Registrations are open. To register go to store.birdlife.org.au or call 03 9347 0757. A BirdLife Australia Congress is held every 2 years. At each Congress, expert ornithologists and amateurs alike gather to hear fascinating lectures and discussions on a myriad of bird-related topics, attend workshops, catch up with the latest bird news, mingle at the Congress dinner, and go on field trips to places of local ornithological interest. Since its inception in the early 1900s, the Congress has become an institution. All states and territories have hosted it, not just in the capital cities, but in different regional centres as well. They have even been held as far afield as Norfolk Island, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, much to the delight of the participants. Coastal Dunes of Discovery Bay, Fiona Blandford Many Congresses have a Campout as its climax. Each year the Campout is held at an interesting ornithological site within easy travelling distance the Congress venue. Some of the recent Campouts have been held in Kakadu National Park, on Cape York and in Gluepot Reserve. Assisted by local birdwatchers, participants are able to see local specialties and may participate in local conservation projects, as well as enjoy a relaxing few days in some of Australia’s best birding locations. If camping is not your style, comfortable alternative accommodation is generally available nearby. For the 2014 Congress and campout The National Education Committee (NEC) and BirdLife Warrnambool invite abstracts for papers, workshops, panels (symposia), and posters. We welcome submissions from a variety of disciplines and perspectives that will contribute to the congress discourse. If you are interested in speaking at the 2014 congress, please see the Congress 2014 document for download below. Drop down menu like on the Eyre wedpage BACK IN THE DAY Trouble at Bird Lovers’ Camp Donald McDonald telling campfire stories 1935, Photographer unknown A sleepy little town nestled on the mouth of the Snowy River in far-eastern Victoria is hardly the place you would choose for one of the most tumultuous events in the nation’s ornithological history. But on one October morning in Marlo, 78 years ago, something happened that changed Australian birding forever. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s trouble had been brewing in the birding community about the ongoing scientific value of collecting bird eggs and skins. At the RAOU’s annual campout at Marlo in 1935, the tension between what Libby Robin described in her book, The Flight of the Emu, as the sentimental amateurs and an irresponsible element in the scientific community finally came to a head. As the 18 campers breakfasted together one morning, watching a Scarlet Robin tend its nest in a tree, George Mack, then curator of the National Museum of Victoria, took out his gun and shot the bird. The ‘Marlo incident’, as it came to be known, caused instant uproar, with ten members, including well-known journalist Michael Sharland, abandoning the camp in protest. The shooting even garnered press attention in several states, with the Argus in Melbourne, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Tasmanian Mercury, among others, all covering the story. “Trouble at Bird Lovers’ Camp,” trumpeted the Sydney Morning Herald, going on to report that, “Efforts had been made to settle the trouble amicably, but when the 17 members from New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland requested the one collector to refrain from shooting, and he refused, claiming that he had a perfect right to collect for Museum purposes, the New South Wales delegates had no choice but to withdraw.” To rub salt into the wound, there is no record of Mack, a licensed collector, ever lodging the specimen with the Museum. At the 1935 RAOU Congress, held in Melbourne just two days after the end of the campout, debate raged. Mrs W. M. Mayo of Queensland, who had been at Marlo before leaving in disgust at Mack’s actions, put forward a motion that “no collecting be permitted at Camp-outs and that any member disregarding the rule be not permitted to remain in camp.” The motion, slightly amended by Alec Chisholm to exclude “supposedly new birds” from the blanket ban on collecting, passed, ushering in a new era in which the science of birds was divorced from their destruction. As Chisholm remarked, “Nearly one hundred years after the time of John Gould, the day of the individual collector has passed.” Yet though the deep divide that appeared that day in Marlo was gradually papered over, similar cracks have sporadically reappeared in the decades since. Even today, there are competing views on the role that BirdLife Australia should play. Should our focus be on enjoying birds or protecting them? Should our priorities lie with science or with conservation or with engaging more people in the joys of birdwatching? With funding scarce, these questions become more pressing. What does the future hold for BirdLife Australia? Will we have another Scarlet Robin moment? The Night Parrot Since then, Night Parrots have been few and far between, though those seeking them have become more numerous and unlucky. Melbourne’s Argus and Adelaide’s Advertiser newspapers both reported on former RAOU President Gordon Binns’ fall from a cliff during some night birdwatching on a RAOU campout near Alice Springs in 1952. The Emu trip report of the camp notes that the company had “constant recourse” to Whitlock’s notes on his successful search for the Night Parrot on his trip to the area in 1923, so perhaps poor Mr Binns had his nose in these (or had a Night Parrot in his sights!) when he so unfortunately walked off the cliff. BOC on the Bus Birdwatching in Australia’s more remote areas has never been a walk in the park. Our vast distances pose difficulties for the traveller, as do the hot weather, lack of water and the rough roads (when a road actually exists). And the Outback is tough on cars. As birder Claude Austin reported in 1967 of his trip into Central Australia, when it came to crossing water it was either get bogged in a sandy creek and carry an entire carload for 100 yards or “cross at great speed and mostly through the air.” It’s not cheap either—travelling for thousands of kilometres is a drain on both the fuel tank and the wallet. NT Border 1966, Photographer unknown In June 1966, the Bird Observers Club came up with a novel solution to these problems by organising a 66-person coach trip, the “BOC Holiday Safari Tour,” to the Northern Territory and the East Kimberleys. Labelled the “most ambitious bird watching tour ever attempted in Australia,” the tour cost members just $6.50 per day (excluding travel to and from Alice Springs) and included “All meals ... provided and prepared by a cook and kitchen staff.” Hot breakfasts, picnic lunches with billy tea and three course meals at night were laid on and the bus was accompanied by “a supply truck carrying water, refrigerated provisions, with port-a-gas cooking and electric lighting facilities”—hardly roughing it! The camp was organised with military precision, each piece of luggage marked with a “bright colour in the form of a star, large dot, line or lines, a ring etc., so that it can be recognised immediately by the owner,” and the campers gathered together to complete the 1966 national census on June 30, ensuring their number was not excluded from Australia’s then population of 11,599,498 people. The planning paid off and as Essie Green of Queensland said: “it was an unforgettable experience and enjoyed by everyone.” The trip report details that good rain after years of drought meant that the “whole countryside abounded in bird life,” with the campers seeing some 220 species and many areas carpeted with miles of wildflowers. Pictured above at the dusty border of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, the campers enjoyed the lush riversides and thermal pools at Mataranka, with its Shining Flycatchers and Buff-sided Robins, saw seven types of finches (including the “lovely Gouldian”) at Red Lily Lagoon and delighted in the Rainbow Pitta and Rose- crowned Fruit-Dove at Howard Springs.
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