On Spoonbills and Koels - some comments and recommendations

["martin butterfield" <>]

WRT to the spoonbills, my original reason for not requesting private messages rather than postings to the chatline was that I felt the posting of a few messages was likely to sustain people's interest in the event and emcourage them to advise of developments.  As in fact it seems to be agitating members of the group and thus counterproductive, I now revise that opinion.

Could anyone who wishes to report developments on the Royal Spoonbill nest please do so through an email to me at this address.

Since, for the LH nest, we seem to have already experienced Display, Copulation and Nest Building - not necessarily in that order - the next major milestones should be egg laying, brooding, hatching and fledging ad I eagerly awit those details (which are likely to extend beyond the Editors deadline for the next CBN.  However the may be some merit in noting when the earlier events cease relative to the later ones and I don't have so much detail for the RH nest.  

In short, let me have the detail and I will try to sort it out and summarise it for a mini-series for CBN.

Martin

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 1:18 PM, Michael & Janette Lenz <> wrote:

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