Birds in Backyards e-Newsletter - March 2012

For the html version of this newsletter, please click on this link: http://birdsinbackyards.net/newsletter/Birds-Backyards-e-Newsletter-March-2012

Greetings Backyard Birders!

Welcome to the first Birds in Backyards e-Newsletter since the relaunch of the Birds in Backyards website.  With the new site we will be able to keep in touch with you all much more easily than we could before. I hope you have had a chance to check out the site and see the range of new features we have developed. There have been a few teething issues, as to be expected with any big project, but these are largely ironed out now. If you have any problems at any time, please let us know by using the Contact Us link.

The Birds in Backyards Team and What We Do

We are a small team here at Birds in Backyards that is made up of a couple of funded positions and an Advisory Committee. The program is managed by myself Dr. Holly Parsons and I have been involved off and on with Birds in Backyards since its inception 10 years ago. We also have Sara Johnston on board who has been running our Evaluation project (you can read about her findings our next Newsletter) and we will shortly have another project officer involved in our Powerful Owl Project. The Advisory Committee is chaired by Kate Ravich and has people with a wide range of talents from education to ecological research and local government experience. Put a face to all our names by checking out this page.

The Birds in Backyards program was developed specifically to address the loss of small birds from our parks and gardens by providing tools that people can use to learn about birds and the natural environment in their area and to help them make changes to accommodate birds. Find out more about what we do here. 

Birds in Backyards Surveys

The Birds in Backyards surveys have undergone one of the largest changes on the website. They are now a part of BirdLife Australia’s Citizen Science portal and so they look very different. However, the surveys themselves haven’t changed, we are still asking the same questions as previously, there is just a different format to get used to and you are required to set your survey location on a map. This can be done simply by entering your address in the ‘About My Garden’ section of your account.

To make things easier, we have written detailed instructions for each survey type (with screenshots) that are available here and on the information page for each survey.  There is currently glitch with the surveys whereby participants are getting an ‘invalid password’ message on the portal. If this happens, go back in your browser and click the link again. This error will be fixed shortly.

 

We thought it was a good time to look at what our surveys have told us since we started collecting data in 2005. This table on the left of our top 20 most commonly seen species in surveys from 2005-2011 is pretty much what we expected to find – our big birds, parrots and large honeyeaters are doing really well, with only a small number of small species being seen. You will notice that many of the birds are from the eastern coastline of Australia – we need more data from all over the country.

Most of the birds that feature in the Top 20 list have done consistently well right throughout the 6 survey years but I have quickly taken a look at 3 species that appear to be changing over time (see right). The Willie Wagtail is one bird that is becoming more commonly recorded in our backyard surveys – it is great that a small native bird is doing well. No doubt their love of open lawn space is partially responsible for this. The House Sparrow (a introduced species) is showing a lot of variation between years (and interestingly they are in serious decline in their native Europe) and the Crimson Rosella appears to be much less common in the past 3 years than it was earlier in the surveys. It is definitely a species that we need to watch closely.

Undoubtedly we need some more data from around the nation but we are seeing different birds responding very differently to living in our parks and gardens.

The Powerful Owl Project

Last year we had a group of over 50 wonderful volunteers (known as Owl Observers) who searched numerous locations about Sydney, trying to locate Powerful Owl breeding territories as a part of our pilot Powerful Owl project. These wonderful volunteers located owls in 15 territories that bred and fledged at least one, usually two, chicks.  Owls in a further five territories were recorded as nesting but the outcome of these nesting events is unknown.  Another two pairs apparently abandoned their nesting attempt, for unknown reasons and six pairs were located by Owl Observers but breeding was not observed. The exact location of the nest tree has yet to be determined for several of these pairs. We also received over 300 emailed sightings from members of the public to add to our database. Slowly we aim to build up an idea of the locations of Powerful Owls throughout Greater Sydney and look at their breeding success and fidelity to a breeding location. Read more about the findings from 2011 here.

We are thrilled to have successfully obtained funding from the NSW Environmental Trust and the BASNA Twitchathon to run the project for the next 2 years. We will soon be employing a fantastic Project Officer to coordinate volunteers from Greater Sydney, the Central Coast and Illawarra and I will introduce you to them in our next newsletter. Volunteers will be searching for breeding territories in the 2012 and 2103 seasons and the project officer will be developing education materials and working closely with land managers across the region to conserve Powerful Owl habitat in NSW.

Keep your eyes peeled on the Birds in Backyards website and in future newsletters about the Powerful Project and how you can get involved.

Feature Bird: The Apostlebird

Apostlebirds are chatty, grey, medium-sized birds that are often seen in family flocks. They earned the name Apostlebird as they are often seen in flocks of about 12 individuals like the Biblical Apostles.

 A dominant male will have a number of females in the flock plus previous a number of juveniles from previous clutches that all help with building a mud nest and feeding the young (they are cooperative breeders). Only the adults though will sit on the eggs. Whilst more than one female will lay in the nest, only up 4 nestlings will survive to fledge.

Apostlebirds are throughout the eastern states of Australia ( though there is also an isolated population in the Elliott and Katherine areas, Northern Territory) but are usually found in drier forests and woodlands though usually close to water sources. They hop around on the ground or through low branches in search of invertebrates, seeds and vegetable matter and they will also occasionally eat small vertebrates.

They are a species that also has a lot of colloquial names including Happy Jacks, Lousy Jacks and CWA birds (because their constant chatter is supposedly like a Country Women’s Association meeting (CWA ladies I don’t agree with that at all!).

Find out more about Apostlebirds here.

BirdLife Australia Website is Launched

Finally, don't forget to head over to our parent organisation's new website: http://www.birdlife.org.au and learn about all the other work that BirdLife is doing to conserve Australia's native birds. 

Cheers
Holly