Blackbirds and a suburban Grey Butcherbird

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Hi John,

Here is the text for the species from the GBS Report. The increase described in my report has clearly continued since then (as shown in the ABR). So it is only "Rather unusual in a suburban garden" depending on how you define "Rather unusual", which I won't go into.

Philip 

Grey Butcherbird Cracticus torquatus

This is a common species in major east coast cities, yet it is rare in Canberra. This would suggest that it is not the urban environment itself that causes the scarcity. In our area it occurs in woodland and along the Murrumbidgee river corridor. Maybe it is the competition from the abundant Pied Currawong that impacts adversely on this bird (see also the Laughing Kookaburra text). Records are mostly of isolated individuals and not many have repeat observations. So the bird passes through, rather than stays in the urban area. Numbers are much higher from February to June, than July to January. This may reflect dispersal during the non-breeding period. Its distribution suddenly increased from an average of 4.47% for the first 18 years to 10%, 18% then 22% for the last three years, which created the huge recent abundance increase.
Graphs on page: 103, Rank: 102, A = 0.00310, F = 6.21%, W = 5.1, R = 0.303%, G = 1.02.