COWRA COMMENTS A quarterly newsletter of the Cowra Woodland Birds Program
ISSUE Thirty – April 2017 Welcome to 2017 surveys. The Cowra Woodland Birds Program is a As most of you will know, the Summer survey had to be cancelled at series of projects aimed at reversing the decline of woodland birds in the region. the last minute due to ‘extreme weather’ conditions so we are starting The projects are focused on scientific a new regular Ramblings from the Chair or Committee Babblers to research and the management of birds keep everyone up-to-date. in their woodland habitats. They involve Ramblings from the Chair – John Rankin the local landholders and managers, the Cowra Shire Council as well as local It seems to be a long time since our last surveys in October. The 43 birdwatchers and members of BirdLife degree days put the kibosh on our summer survey and did not do a lot Southern NSW and other birding clubs. for our statistics either. In October we gave strong support to Cowra Shire Council‘s Bird Week 2017 CWBP committee program. On the Saturday afternoon of the surveys we provided lunch John Rankin - Chair Neale Coutanche Vice-chair to interested members of the public followed with a very well Vanessa Caine received talk by Julian and a hilarious quiz staged by Frenchie and Dan Florance Chaddy. The following Wednesday Neale spoke to a’ Science in the Nick Nicholls Pub’ audience giving a repeat of the successful talk about the CWBP Joy Pegler he gave to the ‘Hollows for Habitat’ forum in Orange a few weeks Madeleine Rankin Julian Reid earlier. Maret Vesk The Dunbogan Drongos again challenged the other Twitchathon competitors with an impressive 194 sightings between Port Macquarie and Condoblin. Sue, Peter and Chaddy built on their reputation as Malcolm Fyfe – survey successful fundraisers and enjoyed themselves in the process. co-ordinator We now have fifteen years of information in our data base. The
committee led by Julian is seeking funding to analyze it. Any ideas of Contact: John Rankin Phone: (02) 6342 9282 where we might look would be gratefully accepted. [email protected] Mark Ley recently gave us an interesting talk on field recording using or apps. This got us thinking that maybe we should move in that BirdLife Southern NSW direction for field recording and data base entry. Rex Schmidt has Phone: (02) 9647 1033 done a lot of work on this issue and we have had input from Garry [email protected] Germon and Peter West. If we make any changes we all need to be Postal Address: comfortable with them so your thoughts please. CWBP, It was great to hear from Kate Ravich one of our initial committee BirdLife Discovery Centre, members back in 2001. Kate is using the CWBP model to develop a Newington Armory project for King Island‘s birds. Launch of ‘Wings on King’ will be in late 1 Jamieson St Sydney Olympic Park 2127 April. Neale, Maret and Mart are attending and Neale will be giving a talk about how the CWBP is structured and operates. We have just completed revising and reprinting the ‘Bird Routes of Cowra District’ pamphlet. The new version with cover photo by John French is available from the Cowra Visitors Center . Thank you to Cowra Shire Council for picking up most of the tab. We are working with others on a number of potential projects for the Newsletter editor: benefit of Cowra’s birds. The Office of Environment and Heritage is Maret Vesk looking at Cowra Shire as a locality for a conservation project [email protected] protecting woodland birds. Funding for The Great Eastern Ranges and the Kanangra-Boyd to Wyangala Link [K2W] projects is coming to an end. We are involved in discussions aimed at revitalizing the K2W project and to extending its work it further into Cowra Shire. Perfect autumn weather in Cowra at the moment so those who are coming to the survey are in for some great birding. Survey dates for 2017 22/23 April 22/23 July 14/15 October
Contact Malcolm Fyfe on (02) 4471 8757 or [email protected]
EVENTS
FOR YOUR DIARY June 10 to 23 July Blue Mountains Botanic Garden - Mt Tomah 'Art From The Birds - Nests & Bowers' Exhibition by Fiona Lumsden Nature Art Workshop - Sun 16 July - $100 - limited places
RANKIN SPRINGS GLOSSY BLACK- COCKATOO COUNT 6th to 8 th October - further details on page 3 Splendid Fairy-wrens ©Rex Schmidt
KEY BIODIVERSITY AREA BIRD We have some reports of other birding events in the neighbouring SURVEYS AROUND GRENFEL 7 districts – first the Rankin Springs Glossy Black Cockatoo Count in The dates for the next bird surveys February and the Birding NSW Grenfell KBA Surveys in March, also around Grenfell is September 22- some great photos for everyone to enjoy. 24 . New surveyors are always welcome. If you would like to Rankins Springs February 2017 receive further information about these survey weekends, please Rex Schmidt contact Elisabeth Karplus at In February, the weekend after Cowra surveys would have been held [email protected] had they not been cancelled because of extreme heat, the Lachlan Fold Wildlife Action Group carried out a census of Glossy Black 2017 Australasian Bird Fair and Cockatoos in the Rankins Springs area. This drew local volunteers, as well as others from the Murrumbidgee Field Naturalists, and even Wildlife Expo 3-5 November 2017 some fearless Cowra surveyors. (For the most part these were Sydney Olympic Park, Sydney, people who in the past have attended the Rankins Springs Birds of Australia the Bush Festival.) The Lachlan Fold Wildlife Action Group for some years now has been The Threatened Bird Network has been operating in the Rankins Springs area with the aim of creating a produced another publication, sustainable habitat for native species, particularly the Glossy Black Woodland Birds of south-east Cockatoo and other threatened species. As part of its activities it has Australia — Identification Booklet . begun conducting surveys of Glossy Black Cockatoos with the aim of An electronic version of the woodland bird guide is available determining the population in the area, and assessing its growth or from the website; simply click decline, which may be useful in assisting future management. They through to have also been involved with identifying the watering sites and flight www.birdlife.org.au/projects/threaten routes, as well as setting up nesting boxes in the hope of improving ed-bird-network/tbn-latest-news . breeding opportunities for these birds.
Rankins Springs has suitable habitat for Glossy Black Cockatoos both in various National Parks and on private land holdings: Glossy Blacks are entirely seed eaters, relying heavily on Allocasurina stricta growing on stony ridges, rocky outcrops and mountain slopes not at all suitable for grazing or cultivation. However, they are reliant on large old Grey Box or Yellow Box to provide nesting sites. They need hollows in large trunks, often vertical, which can be in dead trees. These large trees grow most often lower down the ridges where the soil is deeper and suitable for cultivation, and where consequently many of the trees have been cleared, reducing the breeding sites available to the birds. As seed eaters Glossy Black Cockatoos must drink every day, usually only once a day at dusk, which at this time of the year is between 6:00pm and 8:00pm. They also tend to return to the same watering hole(s), so this makes for an obvious survey protocol: locate known or likely water sources, put someone there between about 6:00pm and sunset, and record the birds which turn up, taking photos of the females, if possible, because the facial markings are unique to each individual bird. You just have to find people willing to sit at each spot waiting for the birds to arrive until the sun goes down. On Friday and Saturday we all gathered at the Rankins Springs Hall in the afternoon and were allocated a dam (one person per dam to cover as many dams as possible). It's a very peaceful way to spend part of an evening. The birds tend to fly in to an exposed landing spot like a dead tree to check things out before coming in to water, so you try to pick where that is likely to be, select an unobtrusive spot where you can observe that and the water hole, settle down on your deckchair, and wait. As well as any Glossy Blacks that turn up, you get to watch all the other activity at that spot. One of the dams I was allocated attracted 18 other species as well as a kangaroo and a goanna, so there was always something going on. Most of the Glossy Blacks arrive between 7:15pm and 8:00pm - usually you hear them before you see them, rusty-gate- hinging their way to the dam. By 8:10pm the sun is gone - it’s time to go back to the hall in town for drinks, a barbecue and a tally of the results. This count over 100 birds were counted, spread across the various survey sites. For birders the good thing about this arrangement is that the days are free for you to go birding, and Rankins Springs is not short of good places to go. Part of Saturday was spent on a patch of mallee a few kilometres out of town where the very wet spring had resulted in green vegetation and prolific flowering, so there were plenty of honeyeaters, particularly Black Honeyeaters including a lot of juveniles; it seems odd to be in an area where these are the dominant honeyeater, but the blacks far outnumbered any other species seen. As well, of course, there were Splendid and Variegated Fairy Wrens that are one of the attractions to this spot. The Lachlan Fold people provided their usual wonderful hospitality, and the extent to which local landholders have been engaged with the group's activities is very impressive. Apart from the birding, one of the major attractions of Rankins Springs is the people that you meet there and their knowledge of what to find and where to find it. The next Glossy Black Cockatoo count is planned for 6 th to 8 th October, the weekend before the October surveys. It’s been separated from the festival and will be entirely focused on the count and bird tours of the area. They can always use more volunteers so keep it in mind; it's usually a great weekend.
Birding NSW’s 11 th Key Biodiversity Area Survey around Grenfell Elisabeth Karplus
Thirty six people including nine new surveyors and six surveyors from Grenfell and Young took part in surveying 31 sites around Grenfell on Saturday March 25 th . Our survey sites are in state forests, along roads and on private properties. The target birds for this Key Biodiversity Area are Superb Parrots, Diamond Firetails, Painted Honeyeaters and Swift Parrots. On this survey we saw Superb Parrots on five survey sites and three other places during the weekend. Two Diamond Firetails were seen on one site in Bimbi State Forest. The surveyors enjoyed dinner at the Railway Hotel on Friday evening and then a barbecue at one of the private properties on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning we did a bird walk around Company Dam in Grenfell and listed 38 species. Four people from Grenfell joined us for this walk. Before this survey we were lucky to get a full page write up in the Grenfell Record. You can read the article at http://www.grenfellrecord.com.au/story/4548372/bird-watching-with-birding-nsw-and-focd/?cs=680 .
Grey-crowned Babblers seen during the Grenfell survey: Photograph by Geoff Ball We list all birds seen at each site and take special note of those species currently listed as threatened under NSW legislation as well as the target species for the South West Slopes Key Biodiversity Area. Michael Edwards, who manages the website and databases for Birding NSW, has done some analyses of the sightings over the first ten surveys to March 2016 (we had to cancel the September 2016 survey because of floods).
Table: Total sightings and species seen during ten Grenfell surveys Survey Date: 24/09/2011 12/05/2012 3/11/2012 20/04/2013 12/10/2013 29/03/2014 27/09/2014 28/03/2015 26/09/2015 19/03/2016 Total # Sightings 674 609 1015 478 735 1336 860 1430 992 1102 Total # Species 67 61 72 55 68 67 73 70 74 64 Total # new speciesn/a 12 12 9 6 6 5 8 8 2
Cum # Species 67 79 91 100 106 112 117 125 133 135 To date we have seen 135 different bird species during the surveys with the number of species seen during each survey varying between 55 and 74 with higher number of species usually seen during the spring surveys.
Figure 1: Percentage of surveys in which species listed as threatened in NSW have been seen Per cent of 249 surveys during which species detected
Black Falcon Black-chinned Honeyeater Brown Treecreeper Diamond Firetail Dusky Woodswallow Grey-crowned Babbler Hooded Robin Speckled Warbler Spotted Harrier Superb Parrot Turquoise Parrot White-bellied Sea-eagle
0.00% 2.00% 4.00% 6.00% 8.00% 10.00%12.00%14.00%16.00%18.00%20.00%
During the first ten survey periods, we undertook surveys on 249 survey sites. Figure 1 above shows the proportion of surveys during which we saw bird species listed as threatened in NS Figure 2: Frequency of sightings of Superb Parrots and Diamond Firetails at individual sites
Abbot's Lane Bimbi State Forest 1 Bimbi State Forest 3 DIPROSE 1 DIPROSE 1n Dodds Lane Holy Camp Rd LAMB Matthew's Bush Block 1 Superb Parrot Matthew's Bush Block 2 Diamond Firetail MIKLA SHORTIS Simpson Rd via Adelargo Stock Route Warraderry State Forest 4 Weddin State Forest 2 Weddin State Forest 4 WOOD
0 2 4 6 8 10
We have seen Superb Parrots at 14 survey sites (Figure 2). They have been seen between one and nine times at these survey sites with Dodds Lane, Abbotts Lane and the site on Mikla Lewis’ property being the sites where Superb Parrots are most frequently seen. Diamond Firetails have been seen on seven sites but only between one and two times at these sites. The maximum number of Diamond Firetails seen at a single site was seven birds seen at a site in Bimbi State Forest. Data from our surveys goes into Birdata for BirdLife Australia. We plan to continue surveying twice yearly in March and September. The next survey will take place on September 16, 2017. If anyone would like to take part in the Grenfell surveys, please contact me on [email protected] .
60 SECONDS WITH CHADDY
On a recent trip to Harrington on the Mid North Coast I ran into a former TV personality who is now travelling around the country collecting and publishing stories about the bush. Monte Dwyer’ s Red In The Centre series of books delve into the whys and how’s of Australian rural life and exposes our bush oddballs, nutters and weirdos in all their glory. A warts and all look at what makes rural Australia tick. And they are a bloody good read. He even visited Condo and documented the story of how some local farmers along with a small plane and a fleet of police cars apprehended the dreaded pig hunters. Never a dull moment!! You will all remember Monte fondly as the mad capped weather man on Channel 9s Today Show who pioneered the outdoor weather segment and always pushed the boundaries of common decency. By his own admission he became disillusioned and bored with that job at around about the same time that it required him to seek therapy and so took the show on the road producing stories and books, where he has been for the past ten years. This keen musician and journalistic journeyman believes in keeping things real, rails against mediocrity and the mainstream malaise. He believes in the uncompromising freedom of the Australian bush and when he grows up he wants to be satisfied that has done his best I caught him at a weak moment and he gave me the full Monty version of his birding life. I found it hard to believe he didn’t have an embarrassing birding moment. He obviously hasn’t been out with Frenchy or backed his ute into an irrigation ditch whilst trying to keep one eye on a skulking Bittern
Q1 . Where were you born and what are your fondest childhood memories? • Born in Newcastle NSW and grew up on a poultry farm in the Hunter Valley/Lake Macquarie region, where most of my fondest childhood memories were spawned. Q2. What or who got you interested in birding? • My father was a bird lover and passed it on to me. I remember him getting me to identify every bird in Cayley’s What Bird is That? (except the migratory waders - they all looked the same to me.) Q3. What or who has been your greatest inspirations in life? • Initially my father, then various mentors I’ve been lucky enough to learn from over the years, and as I settled on my current occupation the great writers – Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, Cormac McCarthy, John Steinbeck, and many others. Q4 . What is your favourite bird and why? • Probably the Birds of Paradise for their outrageous beauty and elaborate mating rituals. Q5. What is your greatest birding moment and your greatest birding disappointment? • Too many lovely moments to isolate one, and I’m disappointed every time I hit one on the road. Q6. If you were granted one birding wish what would it be? • To be able to point out a special sighting to my wife when I’m ninety years old. Q7. If you could meet and invite one person to dinner who would it be and why? • Anyone whose company I’m enjoying on the day. Q8. If you were a bird what would you see yourself as and why? • A softening bird of middle age waiting for wisdom to kick in. Q9 . What was your most embarrassing birding moment? • Can’t rightly recall an embarrassing birding moment. Do you mean like my pants falling down or something? I don’t know what you guys do out there in the bush but I tend to keep myself nice, or at least out of sight. Q10 . The year is 2066. How do you think you will be remembered? • As a chronicler of the Australian Bush in the early decades of the twenty-first century.
Thank you for spending 60 seconds with Chaddy!
Whilst sitting in my taxi today, I sought advice, solace & comfort from the source of all truth & knowledge - otherwise known as: ‘The Taxi Driver’s Bible’,
I came across this article in the ‘S.N.A.G Taxi Drivers’ section. ‘How True It Is’
Looks as though we should all be getting stuck into ‘Oregano’.
Frenchy
Local Links - Stronger Communities LLCI052
Not Enough Hollows to go Around
Mid Lachlan Landcare
Species Specific Nest Box Project
The issue
In the Central Lachlan Region studies have shown that less than 1% of the pre 1750's box gum grassy woodlands exists as remnants that have greater than 20% canopy cover, and are 10 ha in size or larger. Further, it is considered that only 0.05% of Box- Gum Grassy Woodland in NSW remains in near to original condition.
Our loss of old hollow bearing trees exceeds natural recruitment. For any new trees planted it takes about 80-100 years for them to develop natural hollows. M any native species need tree hollows, including 17% of birds , 42% of mammals and 28% of reptiles. The installation of nest boxes is an obvious way to begin addressing this shortage of natural hollows.
The solution After previously implementing two successful Squirrel Glider nest box projects in known colony locations, there has been plenty of interest in nest boxes within our community and reports of further possible Squirrel Glider sightings. A s part of a capacity building/on-ground works project Mid Lachlan Landcare has supplied Squirrel Glider and Red Rump Parrot boxes to some of our local community landcare groups for members properties that contained suitable habitat for these species.
The impact Key facts The boxes will be monitored with the landholders and data • Squirrel Glider and Red Rump gathered to enable further projects of this type as we find more Parrot nest boxes installed on Squirrel Glider populations. The parrot boxes will help us to Landcare member properties. gather information about their suitability and to see what other species may use them. We can then pass this data on to help further develop the existing knowledge on nest box construction and species use.
It is important to remember whilst nest boxes are a fantastic way to provide habitat for certain species. They do not come close to providing the habitat that a natural tree hollow provides. We must remember this and not assume if old trees removed that we can replace their use with nest boxes placed in smaller trees.
Fiona Lumsden’s - Art Exhibition … Sat 10/6/17 - to Sun 23/7/17 Fiona Lumsden, a CWBP regular volunteer, is having a free entry art exhibition at The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, Mt Tomah - entitled: ‘Art From The Birds – Nests & Bowers’ On display & available for sale, will be approx. 30 ‘Limited Edition Artworks’ by Fiona. Fiona says: “Birds are beautiful in themselves but they also make beautiful things. Cunningly woven or moulded nests are intricately crafted and decorated. The decorated courtship avenues of Australasian bowerbirds are avian art creations: built with great care and individual flair by male suitors to impress finicky females with displays of wealth and aesthetic grandeur. We can use their art as our art inspiration to introduce that beauty into a world of human beings increasingly disconnected from the loveliness of nature”. Exhibition Details: Blue Mountains Botanical Garden – Mt Tomah. Bells Line of Road, Mt Tomah. Sat 10/6/17 - to Sun 23/7/17 – Free Entry. Monday - Friday: 9.00 am - 5.30 pm Saturday, Sunday and public holidays: 9.30 am - 5.30 pm For some more examples of Fiona’s artworks to be on display, checkout her Facebook Page:
‘Fiona Lumsden’s Wildlife Art Page’ https://www.facebook.com/fionalumsdenart/
RANKINS SPRINGS BIRDING WEEKEND
FRI 6 OCTOBER TO SUN 8 OCTOBER
• FRIDAY EVENING: SOCIAL BBQ AT R.S. HALL • SATURDAY: EARLY MORNING & LATE AFTERNOON/EVENING BUS TRIPS TO LOCAL BIRDING HOT SPOTS. INCLUDES MORNING TEA & AFTERNOON TEA/SNACKS
• SATURDAY EVENING: MEALS AVAILABLE AT THE LOCAL PUB
• SUNDAY MORNING: TBA
• ACCOMMODATION CHOICES * CAMPING/YOUR OWN VAN (POWERED & UNPOWERED SITES) AT THE CARAVAN PARK * MOTEL * LOCAL B&B & FARMSTAYS
TO BE PLACED ON AN EMAIL LIST FOR FURTHER DETAILS & UPDATES ABOUT THIS FANTASTIC CENTRAL NSW BIRDING WEEKEND: EMAIL FRENCHY : [email protected]