Dear COG members and chat line subscribers,
A reminder that the 9 March COG meeting will be held as a normal face-to-face one at the Canberra Girls Grammar School, Multi-media centre, corner Gawler Cres and Melbourne Ave, Deakin. The COG COVID Safety Plan has been amended and is
attached (also available on the COG web site). If you are coming to the meeting could you please ensure that you are familiar with it. One change is that you will need to bring a mask.
Details of the speakers are below, both presentations will be quite topical so I’m looking forward to seeing you there.
Jack Holland
The short talk will be presented by
Chris Davey and will be a slightly extended version of the one that was going to be given at Members Night in January but was subsequently cancelled due to COVID restrictions.
The presentation titled ‘Difficulties in assessing breeding success in the Gang-gang Cockatoo’ will be based on experience gained since the COG survey in 2014 in the ACT. The talk will discuss general
difficulties associated with a hollow-nesting species, how to find and assess possible breeding sites, Gang-gang nesting behaviour and problems associated with measuring reproductive success.
The main presentation will be by Richard Beggs, a Research and Extension Officer with
the ANU’s Sustainable Farms Team and is entitled “War on the Noisy Miner: reassessing the
casus belli”.
Richard’s Ph D study involved experimental patch-scale culls of Noisy Miners in woodland remnants in the fragmented agricultural landscapes of the South West Slopes of NSW. He presented the plans for the
study to COG in a 2016 presentation and then in 2018 reported how the culls had had little impact on noisy miner abundance due to immediate recolonisation. In this updated presentation he will provide an overview of the problem of overabundant Noisy Miners
from an ecological and social perspective, will consider possible solutions, and will summarise the findings of his own research, including his environmental history of the species.
