G'day All
After putting my two bob's worth on the declining Emu story, I thought I
would do a bit of a survey on a trip from Roma to Julia Creek and back
to see if I could get a rough index of abundance. The method was: two
people in the wagon, both looking while one hopefully paid some
attention to the road, counting what we could at highway speeds while
the light lasted. We decided to make it a 'big bird' count and included
Brolgas and Bustards.
Results:
Roma to Julia Creek, 1090 km surveyed: 102 Emu; 12 Bustard; 70 Brolga
Kynuna to Roma, 1026 km surveyed: 93 Emu; 11 Bustard; 13 Brolga
The Emu and Bustard numbers were pretty similar for both trips (a week
apart). As far as the Emus are concerned, I'm inclined to think we saw
pretty much the same birds on both legs. The Bustards were in different
places each way so I don't think this applies to them. The discrepancy
in Brolga numbers is due to seeing 2/3 of the ones on the northward leg
on the plains between Kynuna and Julia Creek. We didn't survey this
stretch on the return leg.
On average, we saw an Emu every 11 km. While this in no way compares
with the 23045 reported by young Ms Geering (as recounted by her Dad!),
I reckon that indicates a reasonably common animal, given the
limitations of the technique.
One very obvious sampling problem was bird visibility. Nearly all
records were in open 'downs' country. Given that this country
constitutes the majority of the surveyed area, this seems reasonable.
Bustards and Brolgas have a definite preference for this habitat.
However, I'm not so sure about Emus - I know they are reasonably common
in a variety of woodland and scrub habitats encountered on the route,
but unless they are on the roadside, you are very lucky to see them in
this type of habitat while zooming by at 110kph. So, Emu numbers may be
underestimated. I don't think this technique was all that good for
Bustards either. They are a fair bit smaller and more cryptic than the
other two species and we probably missed many of them. Slow driving on
property roads shows these birds to be reasonably common in the right
habitat and I think the highway count under-reports them badly.
The Emus were encountered as singles, pairs, and family groups of up to
9 birds (well-grown young). The Brolgas were mostly pairs with one or
two well-grown juveniles, though loose flocks of 11 and 16 were seen.
I now have to figure out I'm going to report this on Atlas forms!
Richard
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Richard Johnson
Roma District
Tel: (07) 4622 4266 Fax: (07) 46 22 4151
E-mail:
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