Dear Rebecca,
I don't think we've met but we should be colleages quite soon; I'm in the
process of enrolling at Melbourne Uni to do an Honours then PhD on foraging
ecology of Great and Red Knots in north-western Australia, with Jan Komdeur
as my supervisor.
Your note on birding aus has reminded me of a letter I had from Anders
Hedenstrom last year. He is swedish, and specialises in bird flight. He was
going to be in Australia for a Behavioural Ecology conference in September
1996, and wanted to know of sites where he could get study the flight
displays of Brown Songlarks. He was interested in these as in most birds
with striking flight displays, the displays are performed by the smaller
sex; Brown Songlarks are obviously a striking exception and he wanted to get
good video footage so he could analyse flight characters and perhaps
estimate energy expenditure during display flights. I told him he was right
to think that sexual dimorphism in Brown Songlarks is amazing and suggested
some contacts and study sites. I never actually heard if he did this study
but you might want to follow it up. His contact details are:
Anders Hedenstrom
Department of Theoretical Ecology
Lund University
Anainal Ecology, Ecology Building
223 62 Lund,
SWEDEN
Fax: + 046 - 10 47 16
I'm afraid I don't know his email address.
Regards, Danny
At 05:26 PM 31/07/97 +0000, mid year hons 97-8 wrote:
>
>Hi there,
>
>I am performing a study of the sex ratio bias and the breeding system of the
>brown songlark for my honours project (Melbourne University),based on the
>extreme sexual dimorphism found in these birds. The birds seem to be
>returning late to the southern areas of Australia where they typically nest,
>eg. Deniliquin, Hay and Swan Hill due to the severe drought conditions, and I
>am concerned they may already be breeding elsewhere in Australia. It is vital
>to the success of this project to have access to a high density of nesting
>birds and their hatchlings.
>
>I am looking for any information on the migration of the songlarks, the
>current location of the birds, and where they have begun nesting in
>Australia. If you have any information which you feel would help me, I would
>appreciate hearing from you,
>
>Cheers,
>
>Rebecca McIntosh.
>
>
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