CSIRO ibis tracking

[Jas Allnutt <>]

Hi all,

This is a message from Heather McGinness, a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO. We've had a few issues getting this email to send today so hopefully this try works!

"CSIRO has a project within which we are tracking the movements of Royal Spoonbills and Straw-necked Ibis. This year we hope to track some local spoonbills and ibis from Jerrabomberra Wetlands and other sites in the Murrumbidgee catchment using our solar-powered satellite GPS transmitters. We have all required animal ethics approvals, an ACT Scientific Licence for the work and experience in catching, handling, tagging and tracking these species in other catchments.

 

If there are no other events occurring, we would like to start with Royal Spoonbills at the Wetlands on Wednesday morning, followed possibly by a second session on Friday morning.  We will be driving white Toyota Hiluxes and/or a blue Nissan X-Trail. The CSIRO staff team includes myself, Freya Robinson, Melissa Piper, Jessica Hodgson and Jaslyn Allnutt – we will be able to show our CSIRO IDs if required. We may occasionally have volunteers assisting who will be accompanied by CSIRO staff. There may be two to five of us at any one time, depending on our availability and the situation.

 

The methods we follow minimise disturbance wherever possible. In brief, we:

1. Arrive at site and identify species presence/locations – if the desired species are not present, we will leave and try elsewhere

2. Staff hide and wait for birds to come within range of capture equipment (either a hand-net, or a net launcher driven by CO2 gas, or a ground-fixed whoosh/flip net operated via bungees, or leg-snares)

3. Captured birds are weighed, measured, fitted with a transmitter (if they are of sufficient weight), then released

 

All costs are covered by us and tracking results will of course be shared with you all. If there are any queries, I am happy to be contacted.  The project websites also contain extensive information:

 

https://research.csiro.au/ewkrwaterbirds/

www.ewkr.com.au

 

If you would be so kind as to circulate this information as appropriate – e.g. to the COG chatline and the Trust – I’d be very grateful.

Kind regards,

Heather"

Cheers

Jas