Little Bittern

[John Harris <>]

You are very right about the huge potential of the explosion of constructed wetlands in Gungahlin for all manner of water birds. There are many ponds etc some quite reedy which can provide shelter for all sorts of birds.  There are only a handful of COG members up here in the remote north to observe and record and we do our best. I regularly report on Crace wetland and Ginninderra Creek and sometimes on The Valley Ponds. Julie Clarke visits Yerrabi Pond regularly and Bill Graham reports on a few spots further North.

I would be happy to prepare a list of these wetlands if those who record our statistics could say which ones are never or rarely reported on. Perhaps people from the south could adopt a few of them. 

From: Mark Clayton <>
Date: Thursday, 12 June 2014 2:43 pm
To: Philip Veerman <>, 'Wallaces' <m("bigpond.net.au","skcbf");">>, "m("canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds");">" <>
Subject: RE: [canberrabirds] Little Bittern

One of the big problems with cryptic species is that they are just that – cryptic! When COG was surveying for the then proposed site for the National Museum at Yarramundi Reach, which I assisted in, I asked if anyone bothered to check the reed beds for Little (now Black-backed) Bitterns. When told “NO” I proceeded to wade chest deep through the reeds and successfully flushed a couple. Since then there have been quite a few records, often by people using canoes to scan the lake side edges of the reeds. Looking at Lake Ginninderra and the creek that flows into it (past the Crace and Giralang ponds and close to the large McKellar pond where the two current species are being recorded), there are large expanses of reeds that could easily hide both species of bittern and that theoretically are inaccessible except y boat.

 

I don’t know about the south side of town but in the newer Gungahlin suburbs there are numerous small reed and rush-lined ponds that would be quite capable of hosting both bittern species. How many people visit these on a regular basis? I don’t always agree with Philip but I think he is right in this case, with most of the records being of the same birds being constantly reported by people seeing them for the first time and putting them on the chat line. How many make it to the Rarities Panel I don’t know but all records of these species should go through the panel to make sure they are officially recorded as well as putting in something like an “incidental report form” which can be found on the COG website.

 

Mark

 

From: Philip Veerman
Sent: Thursday, 12 June 2014 2:06 PM
To: 'Wallaces';
Subject: RE: [canberrabirds] Little Bittern

 

Thanks for that. So mainly a warm month visitor. (The first RAOU Atlas suggests that too, the second RAOU Atlas is hard to perceive any trend). So is the current winter record record unusual? It does beg the question though about counting the number of records by month. Are these separate records? How real are these data in terms of the species presence? In this species I perceive that there would be very few separate events. The species is rarely here and when here many people go to find it. So there may well be a lot of recounting of the same birds in this graph. Which can make a trend look bigger than it should.

 

Philip

 

-----Original Message----From: Wallaces Sent: Thursday, 12 June 2014 12:48 PM      To: 'canberrabirds'      Subject: RE: [canberrabirds] Little Bittern

Previous records of Australian Little Bittern are all from October to March. The graph below shows the number of records by month for the period 1 July 1981 to 30 June 2013.

 

Steve