Good morning COG/Canberra Birds members and chat line subscribers, a reminder that the monthly COG/Canberra Birds meeting will be held tomorrow evening Wednesday 8 May at our
usual Canberra Girls Grammar School venue from 7:30 pm. Details are below.
Everyone is welcome so please come along and hear about two species for which many of us have very different feelings, the Noisy Miner and the Gang-gang Cockatoo.
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 May 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.
Doug Liang - MARCH OF THE MINERS
Michael Mulvaney and Chris Davey -
How a citizen science project has informed us about the Gang-gang Cockatoo.
Please note that construction is currently occurring around the Gabriel Drive parking area, and access to there is expected not to be available. If the gate is
locked, please use the Chapel Drive entrance and park there. To get to the Multi-media Centre from there, please proceed keeping the Chapel and the next two buildings to your left until you reach a gap between the buildings, go through this and you will see
the Gabriel Drive parking area in front of you (see the map on COG’s web site at
https://canberrabirds.org.au/publications/other-resources/cog-monthly-meeting-location/
). Though it is reasonably well lit, as it will be dark a torch for finding your way to the Multi-media Centre and back to your car after the meeting is recommended.
The short talk will be by Doug Liang on “MARCH OF THE MINERS (or why I really don’t like Noisy Miners anymore).
In this talk Doug looks at how the bird fauna in his and surrounding gardens in the Weston Creek area has changed over the past twenty years, and how
Noisy Miners appear to be central players in the creation of a new suite of avian winners and losers. He suggests changes in local miner behaviour may have been triggered by stochastic events such as drought, fires and consecutive rain events. Reduced
nectar availability and foraging opportunities resulting from these events seems to have emboldened miners to enter and fiercely colonise home gardens, where they had never been dominant, at the expense of some previously common species.
The main talk will be a
joint presentation by Michael Mulvaney and Chris Davey
on “How a citizen science project has informed us about the Gang-gang Cockatoo”.
Dr Michael Mulvaney and Chris Davey, representing a small group of local citizen scientists, will report on a Gang-gang project initiated by Canberra Birds in 2014 to celebrate the Groups’ 50th
Anniversary. Since then, various publications in Canberra Bird Notes have summarized their findings in the ACT up to 2020-21 breeding season.
In their presentation they intend to provide information on various aspects of the project involving observations from the species range within south-eastern Australia, in particular time of breeding
in relation to altitude and habitat requirements for the species. They will then concentrate their presentation on breeding success with an analysis of breeding failures over the past three breeding seasons within peri-urban ACT. They will also outline other
projects associated with the general ecology of the species that have been conducted in association with ACT Environment Offsets Section, Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate.
