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From: "Judith Scarl" <>
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 1:58 AM
To: <>
Subject: Galahs!
Dear Michael and Janette,
I was conducting a somewhat random search for galah pictures on the
Internet, and came across one of my tagged birds- male UM- associated with
a series of posts about why the bird was tagged and what had become of the
project
(http://bioacoustics.cse.unsw.edu.au/archives/html/canberrabirds/2010-12/msg00208.html)
and was pleased to recognize your names!
How are you- and how are your galah friends that frequented your feeders?
Do you still see any of them regularly? I am back in the U.S.; finished
my Ph.D. in 2008, and after a brief post-doc started a job at the Vermont
Center for Ecostudies, where I am a conservation biologist running a
high-elevation bird monitoring program in the northeastern U.S. The galah
project is still my favorite, though, and I'm glad to hear about old
"friends" that are still around!
There were some questions raised on the Canberrabirds list-serve and I was
trying to figure out a way how to reply to the posts (granted, about a
half-year after the fact). If you think it's appropriate I wonder if you
might forward my response to the group- if you think they would be
interested.
I studied galahs in Canberra from 2004-2006, largely in the Ainslie-Majura
area. The focus of my thesis was on vocal communication and sex
differences in these parrots. I've had some papers published on my work
and if you're interested I'd be happy to send them along. My study relied
on identifying individuals and observing changes in pair-bonds and
interactions over time. As I was not using cannon nets or rocket nets to
catch birds, the banding process was slow- I banded an average of 20 birds
per year. Thus, I needed the tags to stay on for multiple years. I had
also hoped that someone would take over this study after I finished my
Ph.D., since having a banded population with historical data can be quite
valuable to a scientist. We never found an interested student. (Since
several of these tagged birds are still around, this possibility is still
open, if you know anyone who might be interested!) We did use radio
transmitters to track a very small subset (<10 individuals) of these
birds, and those radio collars were designed to fall off in 6-12 months-
and most of them did fall off within 6 months.
There is mixed evidence for the effects that wing tags have on parrots.
Ian Rowley, who studied galahs for many years in the 1970s and 1980s, had
great success in this species using wing tags. Denis Saunders tried wing
tags on black cockatoos and found greatly increased mortality. Success
seems to depend both on the species and the tags used (for example, Ian
Rowley found that only galahs with blue tags had increased mortality risk,
so I did not use blue tags).
One interesting thing I noted was that my assistants and I repeatedly saw
almost all, if not all, of the individuals that we trapped in the very
early mornings (before 6 a.m.); those seemed to be the local birds that
came over for a quick feed before moving farther afield. This local subset
of our population was seen both in the year that we trapped the bird and
generally in the subsequent year. This suggests to me that these birds
were doing quite well with the wing-tags, although of course I don't have
data beyond three years on most of the birds.
Anyone that has trapped galahs will probably sympathize with this
statement- galahs are very difficult to trap and even more difficult to
re-trap! During my entire project, we only re-trapped one banded
individual- a male that we caught a year after we tagged him. Targeted
trapping at nests was somewhat (but not much) easier and definitely more
disruptive to the birds. We didn't remove the tags for several reasons:
difficulty (rather, near impossibility) of re-trapping banded individuals
(these are smart birds! They were very suspicious of us!), additional
trauma of re-handling birds after they'd adapted to their tags, and hope
that another student would take over the galah project.
I love hearing stories of how these birds are doing and encourage anyone
that sees a wing-tagged bird to report it to the ABBBS; they periodically
send me reports of these sightings and this data can be used to track
galah movement and longevity. If anyone would like to study these tagged
birds, I'd be happy to talk to them.
Happy birding, and I look forward to hearing from anyone who is interested
in learning more about the Canberra galah project!
All the best,
Judith Scarl
--
Dr. Judith Scarl
Vermont Center for Ecostudies
P.O. Box 420, Norwich, VT 05055
(802) 649 1431 x7
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