Bird Explorers Update

[Kevin Vang <>]

Dear Birding-Aussies

New Year’s Greetings to all!

In December we uploaded 3 new series of bird galleries on our Bird Explorers Website as follows:

• Cowra Shire Area, New South Wales, Australia
• Lengwe National Park and Blantyre Region, Malawi
• Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands
  

These galleries feature hundreds of photographs of many species found in these areas, some of them rarely photographed like the Buff-headed Coucal, the world’s largest cuckoo species

To visit the galleries go to:
http://www.birdquest.net/Highlights.html

Also of interest to people at this time is that the Development and Environment Foundation for which I work, AFAP in Sydney, was undertaking a variety of environmental rehabilitation programs for coastal, lowland forest, mangrove and coral reef  habitats in Southwest Sri Lanka before the tsunami hit.   This includes the lowland, forest habitat of the Green-billed Coucal.  Our local staff  in the bay south of Galle were actually out planting mangrove seedlings when the wave hit.  Due to the small size of the initial wave, they were fortunately able to all escape due to the proximity of nearby Rumassala Hill up which they quickly ran for safety before the bigger waves came in.  

These programs have been badly affected as have the lives of the  local, coastal  communities with whom we work , but due to generosity of the Australian Government and Australian Public, we will be able to assist in the relief effort and once the communities are re-established, we will continue to help them work with their coastal and lowland forest environments to promote sustainable livelihood and resource use. I am sure that with the people’s and the environment’s resilience, the coast of Sri Lanka will recover and again become an eco-tourism haven that both benefits the local income and protects the environment.  If you’re interested in Sri Lanka and you want to follow our relief and rehabilitation work, go to our Foundations site:

http://www.afap.org/

May this New Year be a bit gentler on the world than last!

Kevin and Wojciech