Hello again COG/Canberra Birds members and chat line subscribers, I have just been advised the following:
With regards to parking, please use the Chapel Drive entry and parking spaces near the Chapel. Due to construction, Gabriel
Drive is not accessible for visitor parking until July 2024.
Luckily it will still be light, so it should be relatively easy to access the Multimedia room from there.
Jack Holland
From: Canberrabirds <>
On Behalf Of jandaholland--- via Canberrabirds
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2024 8:23 AM
To: 'Canberrabirds' <>
Subject: [Canberrabirds] COG/Canberra Birds meeting tomorrow evening 14 February
Good morning COG/Canberra Birds members and chat line subscribers, a reminder that the first normal COG/Canberra Birds meeting for 2024 will be held tomorrow evening Wednesday 14 February at our usual Canberra Girls Grammar School venue
from 7:30 pm. Details are below.
Everyone is welcome so please come along and to listen to Nicki Taws’ summary of the 2023 COG Bird Blitz, followed by Damien Farine’s uncovering the secret social lives of several species of birds, which should be a fascinating talk.
There will be the usual raffle and you will also be able to enjoy a cup of tea or coffee after the meeting.
Jack Holland
The February 2024 meeting will be a normal face-to-face one held at our usual venue. As COVID is still widespread in the community attendees should heed social distancing and good hygiene practice etc, and
use their common sense and stay home if they have COVID symptoms. Mask wearing is recommended.
Nicki Taws - Preliminary findings of the 2023 annual COG Bird Blitz,
Damien Farine -
Uncovering the secret social lives of birds: the curious case of the Vulturine Guineafowl (and other intriguing species)
The presentations will be preceded by the awarding of the 2022 and 2023 Steve Wilson medals.
The short presentation will be by the Blitz co-ordinator
Nicki Taws who will present the preliminary findings of the 2023 annual COG Bird Blitz, COG’s 19th annual territory-wide census of birds of the ACT,
and the first one for some years that was conducted under reasonable conditions.
The main presentation with be by
Damien Farine, Associate Professor, Division of Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology at the ANU, on “Uncovering the secret social lives of birds: the curious case of the Vulturine Guineafowl
(and other intriguing species)”
Sociality is widespread in birds. Yet we still know remarkably little about the social lives of most birds. Why do they form groups? How do they move and function as a group? And how do individuals
navigate social life? In his talk, Damien will first explain why these questions have been overlooked by biologists for so long, and how we have managed to overcome the challenges that are inherent in addressing them. He will then share his journey of discovery,
which has revealed that the answers to these questions are far more fascinating than we could have imagined.
He will give examples from his previous research on mixed-species flocks of Australian thornbills and flocks of tits in ancient English woodlands, but will draw mostly from his current work on
(the clearly misnomered) ‘confusions’ of Vulturine Guineafowl of East Africa. Vulturine Guineafowl are large, highly social, almost completely terrestrial, and - until his research - were completely unstudied. Since starting the project in 2016, he has uncovered
how Vulturine Guineafowl navigate the politics of their group, how they resolve conflicts about where to move, and that they form societies that have a close structural resemblance to those of humans. As East Africa recently faced one of the most extreme
droughts in the past century, this also revealed that the social structure of Vulturine Guineafowl might provide important benefits, helping them survive harsh drought conditions.
Finally, to answer how these benefits arise, he will leave the African savannah for some birds that are come much closer to home. They recently discovered that the social structure of Superb
Fairy-wrens also has the same distinct, ‘human-like’ structural feature. Strikingly, we found that who individuals socialise with during the winter predicts the help that they receive when they are in distress - a pattern that almost exactly matches helping
in contemporary hunter-gather societies. These projects, the tools they have developed to study birds, and discoveries that they have made along the way, set the scene for the new research projects that Damien’s group is now developing here in Canberra.
