Recent discussions on the topic of what to
report have been very interesting. Some of my comments below may well be in the
spirit of Geoffrey Dabb?s remarks.
Regarding the Spoonbills and Martin?s
request for reporting details of their activity for a later article in Canberra
Bird Notes, may I suggest that such details are reported to Martin?s private
email directly rather than the chat line. And Martin could then give an update
every now and then if there are significant developments (quite apart from his
later article)..
The Koel issue is a bit more complex. To
Canberrans it is an ?exotic? species, but also it is easily identified by
everyone, also the beginner, and you don?t even have to see the bird (not an
easy task anyhow) to be certain what it is. Hence the temptation to report is
very understandable. It allows even members who may not write often to the chat
line to make a contribution. I should add that a strength of the cog chat-line
is its accessibility and grades of interest to all ? something praised during a
recent conversation with a Hunter
Valley birder who
also taps into our chat line occasionally.
Peter Milburn raised the question of why
we are recording Koels now far more frequently than in the past. The abundance
of its potential host, the Red Wattlebird, at least in central and central
northern Canberra, and range
expansion are his 2 suggestions. There is no doubt that selling off government
homes over a number of years and subsequent garden development by the private
owners has greatly benefited the Red Wattlebird - as I am currently finding out in a
survey of Ainslie breeding birds. Range expansion of the Koel would also be
feasible. The interesting part about it is though, that chiefly males visit our area. Does this mean there is
a highly biased sex ratio in favour of males? And we only get that surplus? When
will the females come? (as Shaun Bagley mentioned, we still need at least one
breeding record).
As far as reporting of the species goes,
could I suggest that we require a Koel-interested volunteer who acts as the
focal point for Koel messages (in the same way as Martin is for the Spoonbills).
If all recordings can be directed to that person, who may plot the results on a
map, it would be very beneficial. Beyond that, the Koel-volunteer may actually
organise (a) Koel-recording day(s) to help resolve the question of how many
birds are there really.
One suggestion to do such a survey would be
to set a day and time of day when members should be out and about to listen for
?their? Koel: negative records would be equally important (and for both,
positive and negative records the exact time of the record). Perhaps Peter
Milburn could suggest from his recent frequent encounters with the Koel in
O?Connor/Turner the best time of day (apart from the middle of the night) for
the survey. And his technique of moving towards the call (running, cycling,
driving) sounds like a good way of getting more info.
And having for Spoonbill and Koel a focussed
member, it is also easy to keep all records for the COG data
base.
Michael
Lenz
