The first presentation will be by Susan Wishart, a volunteer with ACT Wildlife, and is titled “Hooked: where swans and recreational interests intersect”.
ACT Wildlife is experiencing increasing occurrences of Black Swans and other waterbirds being entangled in abandoned fishing lines and pierced by fishing lures. As part of its Waterbird Entanglement Strategy, ACT Wildlife is looking to raise the awareness of governments, organisations such as COG, and members of the public on the welfare issues for these beautiful animals caused by entanglements. This presentation will focus on swans in the Canberra region.
The main presentation will be by Geoffrey Dabb and is titled: ‘The distribution, movements and status of the South-eastern Glossy Black-Cockatoo (GBC), an occasional visitor to Canberra’.
This is an updated and expanded version of a short talk that was given in May without the availability of graphic material. Such material is needed to explore what we know and don’t know about this interesting species. The presentation draws on a range of sources, being roughly 70% from the literature and online sources, 20% from informants, and 10% from the presenter’s own observations.
The points considered include: what is a GBC? – a couple of points about the unsatisfactory name; 1788 to the mid-1970s – changing perceptions about where the species has occurred, and confusion with the Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo; the problem of mapping the core range, and determining the status of the species in different places; food trees, and feeding, with a note on origin of the name ‘Pilliga’ ; the species around Canberra; 2020 – a year of unusual reports and behaviours.