The September meeting will again be a normal face-to-face one held at our usual venue, but as school virus rules for after-hours public meetings in school premises remain unchanged (see under Events on https://www.education.act.gov.au/public-school-life/covid-school-arrangements/school-advice) you will again need to wear a mask and also check in using the Check in CBR QR code, as noted in the COG COVID Safety Plan available on the COG web site (COG-CGGS-Checklist-COVID-19_09Mar22.pdf (canberrabirds.org.au).
The short presentation will be by Kevin Windle on “Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov’s ornithological notes: an introduction”.
Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov (1882-1975) was a well-known Russian writer in a minor genre, not much translated into English. He had a long and varied career, as a soldier in the Imperial Russian army in World War I, Arctic explorer, sailor and journalist. He is remembered mostly as a naturalist, writer and memoirist, whose observations of bird life covered many regions of the then Soviet Union.
Sokolov-Mikitov wrote in the tradition laid down by a novelist, naturalist and memoirist of an earlier generation, Sergei Aksakov (1791-1859). Many years ago, Kevin published a translation of Aksakov’s hunting notes – in effect the first Russian bird book – Notes of a Provincial Wildfowler, first published in the original in 1848. In 2021, he published a small selection of Sokolov-Mikitov’s ornithological pen-portraits in English translation in the US journal, Cardinal Points.
The main speaker will be Dr Heather McGuinness Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO Land and Water with the title: “Satellite-tracking the movements of waterbirds”.
Heather and her team at CSIRO have been tracking the movements of waterbirds across eastern Australia since 2016, using GPS backpack satellite transmitters. They have fitted transmitters to over 150 birds of a range of species (mostly straw-necked ibis, royal spoonbills and Australian white ibis) at breeding sites across the Murray Darling Basin, and have plans to expand the number of species and sites. This work is being done as part of Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research programs (https://flow-mer.org.au/; https://flow-mer.org.au/basin-theme-biodiversity/). The research aims to inform better water and wetland management, including the timing and location of managed ‘environmental watering’, through better understanding of bird movements and habitat use. For more information, please see:
Research webpage ‘Waterbird Breeding and Movements: Knowledge for Water Managers’: https://research.csiro.au/ewkrwaterbirds/
Articles and videos/presentations:
https://flow-mer.org.au/sharing-science-guide-satellite-tracking-of-australian-waterbirds/
https://flow-mer.org.au/satellite-tracking-waterbird-movements-what-can-it-tell-us-and-how-does-it-work/
https://vimeo.com/698411056
https://youtu.be/uqr1byRGHVw
An early report and some other associated articles are here:
https://ewkr.com.au/waterbirds-2019-research-report/
Waterbirds Australia social media pages:
Facebook: Waterbirds Australia
Twitter: @AusWaterbirds
Instagram: @Waterbirds_Australia