Fan-tailed Cuckoo at Boxvale (Mittagong) 5 June 08

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Hi All,

 

Some comments on the below. Presence of species in our area during winter when we "know" that they mostly migrate away during that time, can be due to certain individuals staying all year. However that is certainly not proven by this observation. It could equally happen if all individuals migrate. No reason why it could not be the case that the birds we have here in winter have migrated from further south where they spent the summer and the ones we had here in summer have left the area moving further north for the winter. Thus a wave of migration in which all or nearly all travel but their start and end points are at different latitudes. Separating out the two possibilities is not an easy task. It is very likely to be the case with the Australian Hobby for example.

 

Beyond that, although the Fan-tailed Cuckoo calls a bit during winter, I am sure it is much less than in spring & summer which obviously makes it less noticeable. The Fan-tailed Cuckoo appears to be less migratory than most other cuckoos.

 

Also a comment about books. As good as Steve Wilson's 'Birds of the ACT - Two Centuries of Change', is, it really has its strong points in other areas (mainly the history of discovery of our bird fauna, and to that extent there are very few other books that even try to cover the same ground elsewhere). Better refs for seasonality of the birds around ACT and Canberra are the COG Atlas and the GBS Report because both provide numerical data and graphs and a comprehensive description of the data and how they were obtained. The main difference being that the COG Atlas reports on 3 years based on recording rate for all the ACT & the GBS Report reports on 21 years based (mainly) on abundance rate for the suburban areas.

 

Philip