It is not often I look at Birding
Aus – only if my minder sends me notes on important
things like waders. However I have noted with interest the discussion of
herons.
Firstly the ‘bittern’ seen flying over the
airport could quite easily have been a Black Bittern as this species is
associated with mangroves at wetlands close to the airport as well as the Parramatta estuary. I
have seen birds in the past at “The Landing Lights” wetland (also
known as Riverine Park) and at Homebush Bay.
These secretive birds are rarely seen by the average birder as they rarely
flight by day and spend a lot of time along mangrove channels, a habitat
shunned by most birders.
The leg colour of White-faced Heron discussion reflects the
lack of reporting of field notes by Australian birdwatchers. As Danny Rogers
suggests, there is little information about leg colour in HANZAB because so few
people write up their notes, or even make notes in the field, assuming that the
‘experts’ have written everything there is to know about our common
birds. As Danny noted, museum specimens are not much good when trying to
describe colours of ‘softparts’ of birds. Now that digi-scoping is
becoming popular a lot more people are ‘seeing’ a lot more detail
of bird plumages. However this is a fat lot of good if these images and notes
are not included in some retrievable form in the future. One un-refereed journal
(Australian Birds) has folded due to the lack of contributions and others are
becoming thinner.
If you have any suggestions what bird clubs should be doing
to encourage better note taking, or ways of storing and publishing interesting
notes and images on birds let me know as I will be chairing the next Bird
Interest Group Network (BIGnet) meeting in a few days time. It would appear
that an appropriately managed website could be the way to go – similar to
the “bird track” website mentioned recently on Birding Aus.
Phil Straw
Chairman, NSW Wader Study Group
P.O. Box
2006
Rockdale Delivery Centre
NSW 2216, Australia
Tel: 61 2 9597 7765
