Sunday 1 August 2010, Central Canberra Gang-gang Census

Geoffrey Dabb and I have been conferring and we think that it would be a good idea to do a Gang-gang Census in Central Canberra. The date has been set as Sunday, 1 August.

The idea is that we should get as many people as possible to look for Gang-gangs at likely spots in the designated area between 11am and noon. This short time-frame is important as we are trying to avoid counting the same birds multiple times, so only records from this time period will be counted. 

Central Canberra has been selected as the area as outside this there would be a lesser density of both Gang-gangs and observers. The area is defined as follows:

North: ANBG and ANU, Civic, Turner, O’Connor, Ainslie, Braddon, Reid, Russell and Campbell.

South: Weston Park, Yarralumla, Barton, Deakin, Hughes, Garran, Forrest, Kingston, Narrabundah and Red Hill.

There might be twenty to thirty ‘hot-spots’ in this area that would need to be looked at. I am asking for volunteers to contact me nominating their favourite spots. If two people nominate for the same spot I will ask the later applicant to look in another area. Nearer the date I will put out a list of spots that I have identified that don’t have observers yet. The area you nominate should be of a size that you can cover in one hour (trying to minimise double counting of birds). After the event you can send your records to me, identifying where possible sex and age (adult/immature) of the birds you saw. I will publish the results to Canberrabirds and in Gang-gang/Canberra Bird Notes.

This is an important cause as Gang-gangs are not a well-known species and they could easily be rarer than we think. A Census with lots of observers which failed to identify many Gang-gangs would ring alarm bells, as Central Canberra would be expected to be an area with a high density of Gang-gangs in winter. 

Thanks everyone

John Leonard