Meeting venue for COG/Canberra Birds

Until further notice the venue for our monthly members’ meetings will be the Bugang Room at the Denman Village Community Centre, located at 5 Felstead Vista, adjacent to the Denman Prospect shops (see Google Maps link https://maps.app.goo.gl/NqW3XrN5iJf8dzRe9)

This is a light, spacious, modern event venue with a kitchen.  There is plentiful parking, under lights, close to the door and with several disabled parking spots outside the door.  The room is on the first floor, accessed by two flights of stairs or by a lift.

To help guide you once there the Canberra Birds Sandwich Board will be outside the front door.

For people attending the meeting by public transport, the R10 bus provides a very good service around every 15 minutes from the ANU through Civic to the Denman Prospect shops with the bus stop opposite the venue.  For example, a bus runs to there from 6:57 to 7:23 pm and return buses at 9:05 or 9:35 pm arriving at the ANU at 9:31 and 10:01 pm, respectively.

At the October meeting there will be two presentations of roughly equal length. 

The first presentation will be by Chris Davey on the “Honeyeater migration along the Murrumbidgee River Corridor, Autumn 2026”.

From mid-March to mid-April many members and friends were involved in a survey of honeyeater movements along the Corridor.  Chris will present the results of the survey and compare results with a similar survey conducted in 1997 and in 2025.

The second slightly longer presentation will be by Geoffrey Dabb on “Exactly which magpie is that?” – A riffle through the magpie literature, from the First Fleet to AviList, and a stroll with a camera through Canberra’s magpie-rich suburbs.

The Australian Magpie is our most recorded bird species.  Moreover, as we can see from the long entry about the species in the online HANZAB, much effort has been devoted to gathering information about it.  Now, for eBird purposes, observers have been given an opportunity to record not only different subspecies but also apparent hybrids.  So, there’s reason to consider more closely the variations in the appearance of the local magpies.  This talk looks at different views about variations, and at attempts to classify plumage types.  A recent collection of photos of magpies in Canberra streets is used to show the range of types, and to show there is still a lot for students of magpie plumages to think about.