As some of you might have feared, I have a couple more Canberra bird species. Same procedure as before. I should mention that Atlas of Living Australia brings together eBird and BirdLife Australia records and those
in first RAOU Atlas and in many older sources. As a guide to distribution, the earlier records are now tending to be overwhelmed by the huge numbers of eBird records, although you can select sources as well as particular decades. I’ve used all sources, all
years.
Second species
Not an urban species. The 50x50km square had to be placed carefully to capture enough records to put Melbourne at top of list. (Compensation for the D’s poor AFL season)
Melbourne 5236
Canberra 4876
Sydney 3698
Hobart 157
Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Darwin all zero.
Third species
Brisbane 407
Canberra 332
Sydney 249
Adelaide 118
Melbourne 79
Perth 16
Darwin 4
Hobart 3
From: Canberrabirds
<> On Behalf Of Geoffrey Dabb via Canberrabirds
Sent: Friday, 26 September 2025 5:20 PM
To: Canberrabirds <>
Subject: [Canberrabirds] On the subject of species records and observers
Using the Atlas of Living Australia, I made a 50km square for each of the eight State/Territory capitals. Each was positioned to catch most of the available records of this native bird species, while also taking in the
relevant CBD. This was the result –
Brisbane 2203
Melbourne 1226
Sydney 966
Canberra 430
Hobart 154
Adelaide 49
Darwin 4
Perth 1 (museum specimen only)
Hints - As ALA records go, these are low numbers for a species, White-faced Heron for example having over 700,000 records. Most records of this species are near the capitals, presumably indicating acceptable habitat and
following the rule that records generally come from the most convenient places for observers. However, South Australia is an exception because most records (253 in one 50km square) were more than 50 km from Adelaide.
Which species? Please don’t reply to list in case people want to think about it.
