YELLOW THROAT The newsletter of BirdLife Tasmania: a branch of BirdLife Australia Number 108, Summer 2019–20 General Meeting Thursday, 9 January, 7.30 pm Our wonderful waders Have you ever wanted to join an excursion looking at waders, or to participate in a count, but felt your ID skills weren't up to the task? Even if you have some experience, there's always more to learn. This January, BirdLife Tasmania is presenting an evening of slides by some of our most experienced photographers, focusing on a number of relatively common species whose identification is confusing for the inexperienced. There will also be a panel of experienced wader-watchers to advise us on where to find and how to count shorebird populations accurately, and how to recognise the different species, for example through feeding behaviours. Mike Newman will give a short introduction to the history and purpose of the wader counts, which have been conducted by BirdLife Tasmania members for 45 years. A few days after the wader evening meeting, on 12th January, participants can hone their skills at a shorebird excursion to Orielton Lagoon (see Southern excursions, (p. 17). Then, the wader counts are on 23 January (NW) and 22nd February (SE) and new participants are always welcome (details p. 18). Meeting venue: Life Sciences Lecture Theatre 1, Life Sciences Building, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay. Access and parking are from College Road or from the parking area outside the University Centre via the pedestrian bridge over Churchill Ave. Everyone is welcome to stay for tea and coffee afterwards. Sharp-tailed Sandpipers. Photo by Helen Cunningham. 1 In this issue of Yellow Throat… General Meeting Thursday, 9 January, 7.30 pm .................................................................................. 1 Farewell Clive Minton ......................................................................................................................... 2 Letter from the Raptor Refuge ............................................................................................................. 4 Conserving King Island’s most endangered birds ............................................................................... 6 What’s happening in my patch? ........................................................................................................... 8 A Birdata milestone for Richard Ashby ............................................................................................. 10 Get your Birdata records in ................................................................................................................ 11 Invasion of the cup-moth caterpillars ................................................................................................. 11 Twitchathon 2019 .............................................................................................................................. 13 Excursion reports ............................................................................................................................... 14 BirdLife Tasmania news and views ................................................................................................... 16 Conservation update ....................................................................................................................... 16 Southern excursions ....................................................................................................................... 17 North-west walks and talks ............................................................................................................ 18 Summer wader counts .................................................................................................................... 18 Southern BBQ ................................................................................................................................ 18 March BirdLife Tasmania meeting – Annual General Meeting .................................................... 18 Committee nomination form, 2020 ................................................................................................ 20 Farewell Clive Minton By Mike Newman The news of Clive Minton’s tragic death and the serious injury of his wife Pat in a car crash in Victoria on the 6th of November 2019 sent shockwaves through the Australian birding community. This tribute recounts the history of Clive’s contribution, with emphasis on his influence and contribution to Tasmanian shorebird studies. In the 1980s during a visit to Melbourne associated with the first Australian Atlas of Birds, Julie Strudwick (Tasmania’s Atlas contact) arranged for me to meet Clive and discuss migratory shorebird studies. It was agreed that he would bring a team over to Hobart to show us how to catch migratory shorebirds with cannon nets. The first step was for me to get involved in a Victorian catch on my next visit to Melbourne. It was an incredible experience, during which I had a privileged position alongside Clive in the firing hide. I was introduced to concepts and terms like jigglers and twinklers, which turned out to be Clive’s sons crawling along the ground imitating sheep dogs as they manoeuvred the shorebirds into their assigned position in front of the net. Then the net was fired and of course the first out of the trenches was none other than Clive. The next step was for Clive to bring a team across from Melbourne for catches in Hobart. The transfer of equipment and explosives was no mean logistics task; were today’s regulations in place, it is probable that terrorism laws would have been breached. The first catch involving our local team, which included people like Alan Fletcher, Priscila Park and Bob Patterson, took place at Lauderdale and targeted Australian Pied Oystercatchers. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend and asked Alan Fletcher to phone me with an update. Although ultimately successful, the catch had been difficult, with the tide turning before any birds were in place. Apparently a very frustrated Clive had done a King Canute act and the tide obeyed, coming back and driving the oystercatchers into place at the last minute. 2 The first catch of 50 Australian Pied Oystercatchers at Lauderdale. Left to right: Julie Strudwick; unnamed visiting American birder; Clive Minton; Ken Harris; and Brett Lane. Note the existence of a beach at Lauderdale 40 years ago. A fish and chip shop across the road provided lunch. Photo by Alan Fletcher. In a subsequent catch on the side of the South Arm causeway, the omens for a successful catch were looking good when a car and trailer pulled up at the roadside and the driver got out intending to collect a trailer-load of washed-up sea grass from the area adjacent to the catching area. Clive said ‘leave this to me’ and marched up to the person. For once, Clive’s powers of persuasion were sadly lacking, but always the pragmatist he went to plan B and the trailer of sea grass was loaded in a time which should make the Guinness Book of Records. The subsequent catch was a textbook success. Clive’s capability in the field was matched by his dedication to the analysis and dissemination of results. Indeed, it is arguable that the 1980s were the golden age of amateur ornithology in Australia with shorebirds – I am tempted to say migratory shorebirds – at the helm, thanks to Clive’s influence. Fortunately, he had a soft spot for oystercatchers, a resident species, and my bird of choice. Clive ensured results were placed on record and explained in an appropriate manner to both those involved in the field work and at a more academic level to inform regulators and those involved in the management of shorebird populations and their habitat. In Tasmania, we imitated his lead and our work in the 1980s is documented in four volumes of An Occasional Stint, an invaluable legacy of our efforts. Learning where our migratory shorebirds went was the holy grail of shorebird studies. As banded recoveries came in from overseas, the dots on Clive’s map tracking migration routes grew steadily, but it would clearly take more than his lifetime to obtain a global perspective. Worse still, the ‘Cold War’ prevented any knowledge of the areas in which many of our visitors were thought to breed. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and we entered the era of Glasnost. Interactions with Russian shorebird experts followed, especially Pavel Tomkovich. It was now possible to compare the biometrics of Australian cannon-netted birds with those measured on the breeding grounds and for 3 the first time it was possible to match wintering grounds in Australia to breeding grounds in the Arctic. In the last decade, the emergence of light-weight tracking devices has allowed the migration of shorebirds to be followed in real time and the exact locations of breeding territories to be matched to their wintering grounds. Clive remained intimately involved in these studies and in his inimitable style ensured that the implications of these momentous discoveries were explained to the broader shorebird community in simple terms as they happened. It is hard to envisage future Australasian Shorebird Conferences without Clive’s presence; always a contributor and, as importantly, one to encourage others. I recollect Clive commenting a decade ago at a shorebird conference in Hobart that if he published everything people wanted, he would have to live to 110. More recently, I joked with him that the number must now be at least 125. Sadly, that is not to be. Last year Hobart again hosted the Australasian