Hi Sue
Currawongs are very smart birds, but they’re also very cautious, probably more
so than the yellow robins, When doing fieldwork on frugivorus birds, I had to
conceal myself more fully or stay further from the fruiting tree if I wanted to
watch currawongs or crows than if it was just honeyeaters, fig birds etc. and I
spent a full week at Binna Burra, where although currawongs didn’t hesitate to
raid picnic tables and beg for food in the campground, gradually habituating
them to a cage trap similar to one that had previously caught a couple of
hundred bowerbirds. Finally on the last morning two went in at once and I
caught them both - and I’m sure I would never have caught any more after their
companions witnessed it. I’ve never had any luck catching them in mistnets.
Maybe you could try putting a kind of scarecrow nearby, or life-size statue of
a dog or hawk, testing of course to see if the robins are worried by it. I
found a hawk statue worked for stopping crows eating our free-range chickens’
eggs and the chickens didn’t seem daunted by it at all..
Cheers
Ronda
> On 3 Sep 2018, at 2:00 am, wrote:
>
> . Re: Help!
Ronda Green, PhD
Proprietor, Araucaria Ecotours
http://www.learnaboutwildlife.com <http://www.learnaboutwildlife.com/>
Chair, Wildlife Tourism Australia
http://www.wildlifetourism.org.au <http://www.wildlifetourism.org.au/>
Chair, Scenic Rim Wildlife
http://scenicrim.wildlife.org.au <http://scenicrim.wildlife.org.au/>
Adjunct Researcher, Griffith University
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