While the Painted Snipe reported by Grahame Rogers were a treat for SEQ water
surveyors, the surveys themselves are interesting and enjoyable, and I
recommend them. Because they are on SEQ Water land, you normally can't go
there, so it is a chance to see country otherwise out of bounds. The surveys
are being done by Birds Australia Southern Queensland, Birds Queensland and
BrisBOCA; I've done 2 morning surveys one with BQ and one with BASQ. (Survey
methods are standardised.) The country varies from bush to open paddocks, under
varied management eg control burns, thinned forest, former farmland replanted
with forest of local tree species, "natural" forest, etc. (It's not all "steep
and thickly vegetated"!) We recorded good birds including Stubble Quail
(unusual round here I find), lots of Singing Bushlarks, Peregrine, Little
Bronze Cuckoo (heard only) as well as the usual honeyeaters, thornbills etc.
The Regional Plan for Southeast Queensland has various aspirations about
preserving biodiversity, and some 20 year targets for maintaining and
increasing habitat. Long term projects like this one (and the continuing Atlas)
will be important to monitor what happens.
These are not twitching days where you get a big birdlist, but they are a
chance to help contribute information which should be to the long term benefit
of our birds. I think most of the spring surveys are already organized but
there will be someone in BASQ, BQ and BrisBOCA who can sign you up for late
summer if you miss out this time.
Margaret Cameron
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