GBS Diamond Firetail

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Yes indeed. The relevant extract from the GBS Report is:

 

Diamond Firetail Stagonopleura guttata

A species of rough grassy woodland that can be found on the outskirts of the city, though also occasionally kept in aviaries. It is less sociable than other native finches but sometimes found in small flocks (up to 30). It does not cope at all with suburban habitat. All 14 records are from three sites, two of these (Sites 52 & 247) are on the absolute outer edge of the suburbs, adjoining vacant woodland and one Site 246 is semi rural on Sutton Road. The August and September peaks are probably due to birds forming flocks at that time. Other than that the seasonal pattern is unclear. Numbers from October to January are low, probably as the birds move even further out for the breeding season. There is no obvious long-term trend. The years in which the species was recorded, match exactly to the years in which those three sites were surveyed and just happened to be high in Year 7.
Rank: 133, A = 0.00561, F = 1.08%, W = 3.9, R = 0.164%, G = 3.42.

 

Philip

-----Original Message-----
From: martin butterfield [
Sent: Saturday, 29 January 2011 3:27 PM
To: Steve Holliday
Cc:
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] GBS Diamond Firetail

Steve

A very interesting
sighting.  While there are 123 observations of Diamond Firetails in the GBS
DB the are nearly all from sites with a rural nature.  The most prolific
reports come in years 1 - 7 from a site technically in Kambah, but actually
Arawang.  The only site reporting this species which i would consider
"typically Urban" is in Weston and even that is only 400m from the grassland etc
(well it was grassland then, it is rapidly becoming McMansions) North of 
Duffy.

The species is not rare (but not mega-common) out our way
(Carwoola for new starters) but that is a much grassier habitat than over your
back fence.

I think this is a sufficiently unusual sighting to qualify
for the ACT birdline (noting that it is already in the GBS record so should NOT
be included in BA or COG General records).

Martin

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Steve Holliday <> wrote:

A single Diamond Firetail 30 metres from our back fence in Mt Ainslie Nature Reserve this morning. It was feeding on the ground near 3 Yellow-rumped Thornbills but flew off shortly after and hasn’t been seen again. A first for our GBS site, my closest previous records are from the Campbell Park end of Mt Ainslie NR (once) and the occasional sighting in the southern half of Goorooyarroo NR.

 

cheers

Steve