G’day Peter,
I think that from this morning’s contributions to the chatline that Emus are still found in and around the high country although only in small numbers.
Mark
From: Peter Ormay [
Sent: Tuesday, 21 October 2014 7:25 PM
To: 'Mark Clayton'
Cc: 'Martin Butterfield'; 'COG List'
Subject: RE: [canberrabirds] An out of area report
G’day Mark,
In the late 1950s early 1960s I remember seeing Emu feathers in the Pretty Plains area KNP on a Canberra Bushwalking Club walk. Are they still known from KNP?
From: Mark Clayton [m("bigpond.com","chollop7");">]
Sent: Monday, 20 October 2014 4:51 PM
To: 'Martin Butterfield'; 'COG List'
Subject: RE: [canberrabirds] An out of area report
G’day Martin,
Many years ago while working with CSIRO Wildlife my boss Wayne Braithwaite and I were “banished” to the Eden area by Harry Frith following a dispute on who was Australia’s duck expert at the time. We all knew it was Wayne but Harry disagreed. We ended up working in one of five hydrology catchments set up by the then Forestry Commission of NSW where we learnt our new trade in coastal forests. From there we progressed to working in the whole of the Eden woodchip concession area where we went around all the logging crews checking to see what arboreal mammals that were dislodged living in the trees destined for Japan as they were cut down. We became well know by both forestry staff and logging crews and they took an interest in what we were doing – many were actually sympathetic to the plight of anything that came down with a tree!!. On one occasion we were taken to an unfished forestry road well south of Eden near the Victorian border, and well west of the Princes Highway, that had been halted because there was a male Emu sitting on a nest, obviously with eggs! I don’t know what happened to the nest. There is a population of Emus along part of the NSW/Vic coastline and these could also be augmented from the population in the southern ”High Country”.
This later population is one of the reasons I am not too keen on seeing Emus wandering around Tidbinbilla NR and beyond as I don’t know where this introduced population has come from. It could quite easily be interfering with the genetics of this coastal/high country population.
Mark
From: Martin Butterfield [m("gmail.com","martinflab");">]
Sent: Monday, 20 October 2014 4:27 PM
To: COG List
Subject: [canberrabirds] An out of area report
We have just spent a few days at beautiful Mallacoota. My blog-post about yesterday's activities starts with a few observations that may be of interest to members. It was also exciting to see a pair of Australasian Figbirds on the Casuarina walk: while eBird has a few records from the area there is usually only one or two a year.
On the way back today I was astonished to see a male Emu princes Highway about 25km South of Eden. This area is reasonably well covered with forest. Continuing on our way we called in at Black Lake near Bibbenluke (in turn a few kms North of Bombala). 26 Black-winged Stilts were good to see but the surprise was an adult White-bellied Sea Eagle (which terrified a raft of about 300 Eurasian Coot).
