Winterbirds project

[Lindell <>]

This afternoon, Cooleman Ridge revealed a group of 4 Black-faced Cuckoo Shrikes and on Wednesday there was a lone Aust Reed-Warbler hiding out in the reeds on the south-east corner of pond 6 at the Fyshwick Sewerage ponds.

 

Lindell

 

 

 

 

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Geoffrey Dabb <> wrote:

Today is the start of the nominal ‘low’ period for this 8-week exercise, the framework of which is repeated below.

Martin has helpfully provided summary data for 8 of the 10 species for 28 years of the GBS – the other 2 not being recorded in gardens in the 8-week period.  Of itself, this table seems to raise some interesting points, but enough of that for now.  This exercise is of course not limited to GBS sites and extends to the whole COG area of interest.

		Full Period
RAOU_number	New_name	Total # birds	# sites	A	F%
338	Fan-tailed Cuckoo	25	22	0.0021	1.3
401	Rufous Whistler	410	364	0.0344	20.8
424	Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike	2287	1586	0.1916	90.7
453	White-throated Gerygone	13	10	0.0011	0.6
463	Western Gerygone	12	9	0.0010	0.5
547	Dusky Woodswallow	175	15	0.0147	0.9
645	Noisy Friarbird	306	139	0.0256	8.0
671	Olive-backed Oriole	20	20	0.0017	1.1
		Site weeks	sites active
	Denominators	11934	1748

Shaun Bagley has pointed out that some of the subject birds might be not absent but silent, which is part of the challenge.  A silent reed-warbler skulking somewhere in a reed-bed (which the ACT atlas suggests one or two might do) would be quite a find.

Previous message:

From: Geoffrey Dabb [
Sent: Wednesday, 2 June 2010 11:06 AM
To:
Subject: Festival of the Straggler

 

Putting aside those species that leave the Canberra area altogether,  we all know about those species that become a bit scarce in the local area in the Winter months.   July is the low month for several of those species.  Actually the lowest period might be something more like 20 June – 20 July.  This year let’s take a closer look at the 8 weeks ending on 31 July, starting this Sunday 6 June.  There are signs that with the wet Autumn more food might be around this Winter.

It’s a bit arbitrary, but these are the 10 species I suggest are of main interest in this regard:

Fan-tailed Cuckoo

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike

Australian Reed-Warbler

Rufous Whistler

Rufous Songlark

Western Gerygone

White-throated Gerygone

Noisy Friarbird

Olive-backed Oriole

Dusky Woodswallow

None impossible, some more likely than others.

If you come across any of those 10 species in the ACT/COG area 6 June to 31 July.  I would be very interested to get a report of it (with numbers) with a view to collating the results.  You could send a report to the chatline or to me directly.