Banded Stilt breeding information

Following up on my earlier posts about Banded Stilt bands and their significance, Reece Pedler, who has done/is doing research on the Banded Stilt, kindly wrote to me with some very helpful information. He has given me permission to reproduce it here for readers’ interest/information. Regards. Richard From: Reece Pedler [mailto:reece.pedler@deakin.edu.au] Sent: Friday, 28 November 2014 8:58 AM To: Richard Nowotny Cc: roscoedj@gmail.com Subject: RE: [Birding-Aus] Banded Stilt breeding information Hi Richard (& Ross), Thanks for getting in contact. Interesting to hear of your sightings. Apologies for my lack of reply – I have been away and out of email contact for the last few weeks. Banded Stilt breast bands – Just to clarify, although juvenile Banded Stilts lack a breast band, the absence of a breast band (or a mottled/incomplete breast band) is not necessarily diagnostic of a juvenile or immature bird. The breast band of Banded Stilts has been a source of confusion and intrigue for many decades. It was assumed that this breast band was either an indicator of either sexual maturity or a seasonal breeding plumage, however observations in the 80s and 90s (eg Lake Ballard breeding colony 1995) demonstrated that Banded Stilts sometimes breed without a breast band, which begs the question of why they have one at all. From banding/flagging a large number (~1,400) of Banded Stilts in recent years and then making repeat re-sightings of them, it is apparent that adult stilts can either partially or almost fully regress the breast band, but perhaps not on a seasonal or predictable basis. Several times in the last three years I’ve observed flocks of Banded Stilts in which the majority of adults have partial or no breast band. – The diagnostic features of immature birds are grey around the lores and/or frons and either grey/brown legs in very young birds or pinkish legs with grey around the tibio-tarsal joints (“knees”) in immature birds. There are also some pale edgings to the primary feathers of juv birds, but these are nearly impossible to see in the field. Recent Breeding events From aerial surveys following rainfall events, I have detected the following breeding attempts in the last 12 months: – Lake Ballard (north of Menzies in WA Goldfields). ~4,500 pairs began nesting on small island in early Feb 2014, but had completely abandoned a month later after the premature drying of the lake. – Lake Mackay (on WA/NT border). ~6,500 pairs detect from air on nests in early March 2014. Fate of colony unknown, but likely to have been successful. – Lake Torrens (600 km N of Adelaide, SA). Nesting attempt by ~500 pairs predated by Silver Gulls. Subsequent but unknown attempts may have been successful. In the last 3 months, I and other observers have seen a handful of juvenile stilts at locations in SA, which suggest that there has been some successful breeding somewhere in the SA or WA inland recently. I’ve been unsuccessful in narrowing down where this might have occurred though (see attached correspondence). Flag sightings There are quite a number of flagged birds out there and we are really keen to get more sightings to build up some pictures of movement, breeding plumage patterns and lifespan etc. For interest, Danny Rogers recently spotted one of our flagged 1 yo birds at Werribee WTP two weeks ago. We are yet to have any WA sightings of this cohort of blue-flagged birds (caught as chicks near the Lake Torrens SA breeding colony in mid 2013), despite ~150 sightings from SA and Vic. Anyway, hope this is of interest and happy to discuss further or hear details of future sightings. Thanks and regards, Reece Pedler PhD Candidate Deakin University Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences MOBILE: 0400 038 452 EMAIL: andy.bennett@deakin.edu.au> reece.pedler@deakin.edu.au