canberrabirds

Yellow-tufted HE at National Gallery

To: "Ian Fraser" <>, <>
Subject: Yellow-tufted HE at National Gallery
From: "Philip Veerman" <>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 16:42:32 +1000
Well Ian, that is one of those hard to draw a defining line kind of issues. And your asking is a looooooong way short of obnoxious. Sadly English doesn't grace us with a word with a meaning between "Common" and "Rare" (does any other language fill the gap?) so we have awkward juxtapositions of "moderatelies" and "rathers" and prefixes like "un", just to make life difficult. I'd say this bird is certainly within that awkward in-between grouping but not an unqualified "rare".
 
As for the bird, McComas Taylor as long ago as 1986 in an article CBN brought to notice that the species is regular in Canberra in winter and his observations has stood the test of time. I like it when I do but am hardly surprised to encounter the species at places like Kambah Pool or the lower picnic ground or the visitors centre at Googong in winter. I have seen it at my house in winter, and at Maria's house in Queanbeyan in winter. >From my indispensable GBS Report, its rank (in terms of occurrences of species at a site on a year), is number 111 among the 221 species recorded in COG's GBS over the first 21 years. That rank (111) is after the Yellow Robin and before Rufous Songlark, Spotted Turtle-Dove and Skylark. These data are surely obtained without bias. This is a species that is easy to identify, easy to count as it doesn't occur in flocks and there wouldn't be a GBS observer who encounters this species and forgets to record it. It has been recorded on most years in the GBS and for an average of 3.9 weeks per year. That is just the numbers and hey I just assembled them.
 
Philip
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