Very curious and I wonder where the funds come from for this idea and what it will add to other information available. Do they really expect to obtain enough
information to be statistically useful? The involvement of Richard Kingsford would indicate that the idea has been thought through. I thought of it being of use to monitor uptake of organic pollutants of international migrants (waders) and maybe plastics
in sea birds (if that shows in feather chemistry, quite apart from in their stomachs). I suggest the legality issue is irrelevant, as it doesn’t matter. No one would be prosecuted on this. As for ducks, an obvious source of such data is duck shooters, they
have the obvious means of collecting known samples. Plus of course all the museum specimens all over the place. Given that duck shooting is virtually encouraged by governments all around the place, that shows the enthusiasm of society in general for being
disinterested in prosecuting people for the trivia of having feathers. If people are interested they just tell the organisation where and when it was found. As for identifying species of feathers found randomly, for a lot of individual feathers, it is not
that difficult to do from size, shape, colours etc (maybe not down feathers).
However when you look at the pdf it is clearly aimed at Ibis, in which case identifying feathers of Straw-necked & White Ibis is normally simple. But they need
to be more targeted at ibis if they are indeed only interested in ibis, otherwise they will get all kinds of irrelevancies.
Another suggestion is that just on looking at the website, the species of bird it comes from will not always be overly important. They appear to be looking
mainly at tracking nutrient movements.
Philip
From: Mark Clayton [
Sent: Wednesday, 11 November 2015 11:59 AM
To: 'Marg Peachey'; 'Canberra Birds'
Subject: RE: [canberrabirds] Wetland feather mapping
An interesting concept but one that, without knowing all the details, would currently be considered illegal as there is no way of knowing how the feathers
were obtained in the first place. If someone just picks up a feather it may be almost impossible to accurately identify the species although DNA analysis could possibly sort that out. I will contact Kate Brandis for more details.
Mark
From: Marg Peachey [
Sent: Wednesday, 11 November 2015 11:07 AM
To: Canberra Birds
Subject: [canberrabirds] Wetland feather mapping
Hi,
My daughter sent this to me. Sounds like a great project that some of you may be interested in.
