I have finally taken the time to have a look at Laurie's analysis of the
field guide survey. Good work Laurie.
However ... Laurie set out to bait the Sydney birdo's with the comment
that Melbourne is the centre of the birding world and, to date, no-one
seems to have bitten. At this stage I would like to point out that I have
never lived in Sydney, growing up on the NSW mid-north coast, nine years on
the NSW north coast and five years in Newcastle. I moved to Melbourne in
January for work reasons and to be honest I haven't really had a great deal
of time to go birding or get heavily involved with the local birding
community (was on the committee of the Hunter Bird Observers Club for four
years).
In my time here I have managed to get up to the BA Vicgroup campout at
Easter and have been to one Vicgroup meeting. What struck me, from a
newcomers point of view, was the, apparent, lack of support this group
appears to be getting from the general birding community. I admit that my
exposure to this group has been very limited and there may have been very
good reasons why this particular camp and meeting were not terribly well
attended.
Monthly meetings of the Hunter Bird Observers Club regularly have
attendance's of 40 to 50 while the two Sydney bird clubs and Canberra
Ornithologists Group often do better than this while the Illawarra club in
Wollongong would be similar (based on the meetings of these clubs I
attended as a speaker). HBOC campouts attract 20 to 30 people while the
Sydney clubs may have more attending.
NSW also has a large number of active banders. The number of banders in
Victoria appears to have slumped.
I don't want to rekindle interstate rivalry. My question is merely this:
is Victoria going through a bit of a birding slump? My impressions are
that the general birding community here is far less active than in NSW. If
this is so I assume that they will spring to life once the atlas gets under
way. On the other hand it may be that I was simply more active before
arriving in Melbourne.
David Geering
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