About the Birds of Canberra Gardens Book
Foreword
Raucous flocks of cockatoos, gleaning mobs of galahs, the plaintive creak of a roving Gang Gang – these are everyday Canberra experiences that remind us that we live in a city that sits within a unique natural environment.
There are over 700 species of birds in Australia and the Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) Garden Bird Survey has recorded 228 species in and around Canberra gardens. This book is a guide to these species, their distribution and their abundance.
The high visibility of Canberra’s birdlife results in part from the design of the city’s suburbs, parks and open spaces. Natural corridors and tree lined parkland provide birds with ready access to our suburban parks and gardens. From Mulligans Flat in the north to Tuggeranong Hill in the south, there are 30 nature parks, generally in close proximity to the suburbs. Many home gardens are ‘bird friendly’ habitats, providing shelter and food for a broad range of species. As well, an important aspect in Canberra is the widely distributed water quality ponds which provide a refuge for a wide range of water birds.
It is the responsibility of all Canberrans to ensure we preserve and strengthen this environment – so that it continues to nurture a robust birdlife and to enrich the lives of our own and future generations.
COG is contributing in many ways to this task. A major contribution is through its surveys of bird abundance and distribution – over many years at many different sites and habitats. Information about the types of birds inhabiting an area can be an important indicator of the health of these habitats, and the health of the environment overall.
I am proud of my Government’s record in maintaining and improving habitat for our local birds. We have protected important bird habitat at Goorooyaroo, Callum Brae and central Molonglo; established the Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary where the reintroduction of locally declining or extinct species will soon commence; and we have recognised the threat that cats pose to birdlife and acted to confine cats in suburbs adjoining Mulligan’s Flat and Goorooyaroo. The Government is currently working to ensure the habitat values of the Jerrabomberra Wetlands are strengthened and preserved.
Canberra’s street and park trees also provide important habitat for our birds. The Government has established an expert reference group to advise it on the renewal of our ageing urban forest. This work includes planning for a program and for tree species that will serve the long term needs of all Canberrans including our native wildlife.
This revised edition of Birds of Canberra Gardens provides a new opportunity for Canberrans to track the abundance and stability of our bird population. It is a wonderful example of how a group of skilled and dedicated volunteers can sustain a major survey for 27 years and draw together the resources to produce an accessible and informative reference on the birds of the Territory.
I share COG’s belief that a community that appreciates and understands its local birdlife is a community that is sensitive to the environment on which that birdlife depends.
As Canberrans we have access to some of the highest quality natural environments in the country. The opportunities to enjoy our local birdlife are unique and diverse. Use this book to get out there and enjoy our local birdlife. Use it to find out about the birds you see and to find the birds that you want to see.
Jon Stanhope MLA
Chief Minister of the ACT
October 2009
Acknowledgements
The second edition of Birds of Canberra Gardens, like the first, is the product of many people who have contributed in many different ways. It is the culmination of the efforts of many members of the Canberra Ornithologists Group and a good number of other people over the years. There is quite a risk, in acknowledging the contributions of so many people over 27 years, that some contributions might inadvertently have been overlooked. I hope this has not occurred, but if it has, it is certainly not any reflection on the value of their contribution.
As the editor of the book Paul Fennell has been a major contributor. The continuing success of the Garden Bird Survey is due to Martin Butterfield, the current coordinator of the Garden Bird Survey, through previous coordinators including David Rosalky, Paul Fennell, Philip Veerman, McComas Taylor, Ian Baird, Graham Elliott and Neil Hermes, at the beginning in 1981. A particular mention should go to Kay Hahne who has laboured assiduously over many years to enter the data from the charts into the Garden Bird Database. More recently she has received significant assistance from Anne Hall.
In the production of this volume, Martin Butterfield has most successfully carried out the difficult and complex operation of extracting the relevant information from the Garden Bird Data base and turning it into useful statistical information. The revision of the text based on the new information was carried out by Chris Davey, David Purchase, Nicki Taws, Ian McMahon, Grahame Clark, Barbara Allan, Steve Holliday and David McDonald.
Kathy Walter consulted on the design of the book and graphics company Paper Monkey provided the basic layout concept.
Harvey Perkins and Barbara Allan undertook the overall proof-reading of the manuscript with assistance from Chris Davey. Julian Robinson reviewed the grapic elements.
Since 2000 there has been great progress made in digital photography and the ability to edit photographs with programs such as Photoshop, and to transfer them over the internet. This has helped enormously in the task of finding suitable photographs. The COG Photo gallery on the COG Website, organised by David Cook, has provided many leads for suitable illustrations. So has the photo sharing website, Flickr. David Cook and Julian Robinson assisted in the collation and presentation of the many magnificent images for the book. They also provided many images from their own collections. While each photograph has an acknowledgement, special mention should also be made of the contribution of Grahame Stephinson, Helen Fallow, Marj Kibby, Geoffrey Dabb, Simon Bennett, Stuart Harris, Leo Berzins, Lindsay and Rhonda Hansch, Max and Cathy Gilfedder, Margaret Leggoe, and Max Sutcliffe who gave great support to the project.
Melissa Street, Parks, Conservation and Lands, Territory and Municipal Services, ACT Government, prepared the maps showing the distribution of sites.
A special and enduring acknowledgment must go to the COG members and others who kept a week by week record of the birds they observed in their site, sometimes over a period of many years. Without this effort, there would be no survey data.
A select few have submitted a chart for every year of the survey. This group includes: Joe Barr, Chris Davey, Kay and Horst Hahne, Jack and Andrea Holland, and Michael Lenz.
Chris Davey
President 2009
Dedication
Steve Wilson OAM
This book is dedicated to the memory of Steve Wilson OAM (1912‑2009), a past president and life member of Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) and to his wife Nonie. Steve is warmly remembered by COG for his intellectual leadership and extensive knowledge of the birdlife of the ACT and region. He was tireless in his efforts to document the abundance and distribution of birds in the ACT through extensive pioneering work in mist-netting and banding native birds in the Brindabella Range, along the Murrumbidgee Corridor, at the Botanic Gardens and several other sites around Canberra. A number of his protégés in this work have gone on to play key roles in Australian avian research.
His book, Birds in the ACT: Two Centuries of Change (1999), published when he was 87 years if age, is a scholarly examination of the presence, abundance and distribution of birds in the ACT based on all available records.
Steve and Nonie Wilson provided a garden bird survey chart for the first 23 years of the survey. His survey detailed the numbers and occurrence of some 115 species at or near his Canberra garden.
Introduction
Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) published Birds of Canberra Gardens in 2000, based on the findings of the Garden Bird Survey which had been running for 17 years. This second edition of Birds of Canberra Gardens now covers 27 years of the survey, which is continuing more strongly than ever. Over the entire survey period many COG members and other interested people recorded the birds observed in their gardens and in the immediate vicinity. They have completed more than 1707 Garden Bird Charts amounting to more than 69701 weeks of observations at 356 different sites.
Since 2000 there have been significant changes to the regional and suburban environment including the disastrous bushfires of January 2003 and prolonged periods of water restrictions, which have had a varying but significant effect on suburban gardens and urban parks and playing fields. Canberra is still the bush capital, and the observation of about 230 bird species in and around Canberra suburban gardens gives testimony to this.
This book is about the birds in and around Canberra gardens or in adjacent Canberra parks and open spaces. It describes the abundance and distribution of birds, and discusses how the birds are likely to be found at different times throughout the year, and in different places. The book also provides some ideas on how your garden may be made more attractive to native birds, and some discussion of conservation issues.
Dedicated amateurs, who have different levels of observational skills, have collected the data. Some observers put in more effort than others. However, because this variability among observers is assumed to be uniform over the 27 years of the survey, we believe that valid comparisons between the years’ results can be made.
The survey has picked up changes in bird populations – the times of the year when species are numerous and when they are not, when certain birds are most likely to be seen breeding and feeding their young, and changes over the 27 years. The survey has also helped to record the rarer species that from time to time visit the Canberra region.
Many birds that are migrants to the Australian Capital Territory have similar annual patterns of abundance. Most resident species also display regular annual patterns. This has been clearly demonstrated throughout the survey. The graphs based on the survey observations highlight the months when the populations peak and when they decline during an average year. In some species, such as the Pied Currawong this pattern has changed over the years. The graphs also clearly display the abundance of a species over the life of the survey. Some species have increased, some have decreased, some have remained fairly stable, while others have fluctuated in abundance over the years.
Although migration occurs in spring and autumn, migrant birds generally fall into one of two groups. Some, such as the cuckoo family, are summer migrants. They go north for the winter and return for the summer. Some birds, such as the Rainbow Bee-eater, may travel as far as New Guinea. Others, such as the Pied Currawongs, Golden Whistlers and Scarlet Robins, are altitudinal or winter migrants. They do not travel far but go to higher altitudes for the summer and to mid-altitudes such as Canberra for the winter. Thus Canberra bird species can be divided into those more common in winter, those more common in summer, and those which are generally resident throughout the year. The interplay of these factors gives added interest to urban bird watching in Canberra.
It is important to note that numerical information is derived from the results of a specific survey at specific sites in any given year and should be interpreted as such, and not generalised to include all ACT birds. Statements about specific numbers of breeding records of a species, for example, refer only to the survey results. For example, the species may breed prolifically elsewhere but breeding events are not recorded in the Garden Bird Survey.
To make the book more useful we have combined the information from the Garden Bird Survey showing distribution and abundance with some other information, such as feeding habits, breeding and behaviour to round out the picture. The species are presented in roughly systemic order. However, because the book is about garden birds, birds most likely to be observed in Canberra gardens are more to the front of the book.
New Holland Honeyeaters chat urbanely over a drink in a Canberra garden.