On Tue, 12 May 1998 11:19:28 +1100 lorne <> wrote:
>Hi gang... Lorne here...
>
>1. Congrats to Edwin Vella on finding the Swifts and Regents... wish I'd
>been with him! Oh well, we got a Yellow Wagtail together months ago.
>I'll be out to Castlereagh on Thursday, with my fingers crossed tightly.
>
>2. Can anyone tell me rough numbers in the wild for boths Swifts and
>Regents. Are they definately two of Australia's rarest birds?
>
>3. Bought a pair of HANIMEX DISCOVERY binocs for $90 from a K-Mart,
>recently. Light-weight, 10 x 50, nice design, 50mm width eyepiece. If
>you need some cheap, decent binoculars, have a look at them.
>
>4. Some bad facts from the A.C.F. ...
>
>* More than 5 million birds are killed each year in Australia due to
>land clearing.
>* Australia clears more land than any other developed country.
>* The amount of land cleared in Aust. over the last 50 years equals the
>amount cleared in the forst 150 years of settlement!
>
>PEACE and happy birding,
>
>
>LGJ.
Lorne, there are probably about 2000 Swift Parrots left in the wild. This was
not
always the case: this is only a fraction of their original population. Its
worth
adding that there was a census of breeding pairs in Tassie in 1987, when 1320
pairs were found. In 1995 another census found only 940 pairs (Swift Parrot
Recovery Plan). Up your way, there estimates of thousands of Swifties in
several
places around Sydney in the 1950s. The Recovery Team's long-term objective is
to get the Swift Parrot's population back up to 2500 mature birds.
Simon Kennedy, Swift Parrot Project Officer
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