On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 14:26:17 +1000 "Conole, Lawrie"
<> wrote:
> > It seems to me that I
hardly ever see (or hear) ARs in southern
> > Victoria. My records since 1985 indicate that in the south west they
> > are found only in the Grampians and only on the mountain ridges and
> > peaks - not apparently in the lower areas. My other records are for
> > the north east and Mallee areas.
> >
> Steve
>
> In my experience around Geelong (on the SE fringe of SW Victoria) since
> the late 1970s, Australian Ravens are predominantly birds of large
> continguous forest blocks in the region; rarely found on farmland and
> never in town. They are widespread and often heard in the Brisbane
> Ranges, in various contiguous forests leading from there towards
> Ballarat, and in drier parts of the Otway Ranges. They are absent even
> from rather large woodland remnants such as Inverleigh FFR (~1,000
> hectares).
>
> Little Ravens are ubiquitous just about everywhere else in town and
> country, yielding only to ARs deep in the big forest blocks, and to
> Forest Ravens in the Otways. LRs are the quintessential "town crow" in
> this area, contrasting with other cities up the east coast where ARs and
> Torresian Crows, or in Tasmania FRs, fill this urban niche.
>
> FRs, in my experience, are widespread in the forested Otways, then
> patchy on farmland/coastal scrub right across to Portland, and
> straggling up into the Wannon region almost to the bottom of the Wimmera
> (rare in Jilpanger FFR just south of Arapiles-Tooan SP, west of
> Gariwerd/Grampians).
>
> In the the Victorian Mallee region, ARs are more-or-less the main Corvus
> sp. that comes to mind if I dredge my memory. In parts of the
> Murray-Sunset NP near Lindsay Island there are significant numbers of
> Little Crows from time to time too; but even this far north there are
> also a few Little Ravens.
>
> I've often thought that some long Corvus survey transects across parts
> of SW Victoria would prove interesting, but have not ever quite managed
> to do that yet ........
>
> Cheers
>
> Lawrie Conole
> 58 Holden Street, Fitzroy North 3068 Victoria, AUSTRALIA
> Phone AH (03) 9486 4575
> Ph Mob (0419) 588 993
> Email <>
>
>
> PS: FFR shorthand for fauna & flora reserve, NP for national park, and
> SP for state park, in case anyone wondered.
>
I've been doing some forest bird surveys in Gippsland over
the last few months and have had an interesting time
identifying ravens in the Strzeleckis (broadly bound by
Wilsons Promontory, Mirboo North, Latrobe Valley and
Yarram). I've recorded both Forest and Australian Ravens
(and ones I'm not prepared to assign to species) all by
call in this area but I haven't yet determined whether
either species occupies a particular habitat. Forest in
this area varies from wet to dry mountain foothill forest,
pine plantations, Blue Gum plantations, Banksia/Stringybark
forest and heathy forest. I seen to recall reading that
Forest Ravens seemed to favour pine plantations (I don't
know the seasonality of this or which district is
relevant). Also, someone did a study of raven social
organisation in the Otway forests (yes, I'm really dredging
the memory here) which come up with some interesting
seasonal changes in Forest Ravens and possibly Aus. Ravens.
I'll see if I can find some habitat correlations for the
Strzeleckis and also name of the Otway study.
Back to South Gippsland, Forest Ravens seem to predominate
at Wilsons Promontory (not surprising considering it looks
so like Tasmania) and occur in the forested Cape
Liptrap-Walkerville area. I'm not sure which raven species
occur immediately adjacent to these areas, in farmlan,
fragmented lowland forest, coastal scrubland and foothill
forest.
The Atlas of Victorian Birds is worth a look to see where
each raven species is supposed/possibly found.
Will we get to RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Ravens?
George Appleby
----------------------
George Appleby
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