I obviously need to do more research on the Orange-bellied Parrot to fill in some gaps of my knowledge of the species. That being said I was wondering if anyone knows if certain individuals from Melaleuca fly to the mainland and spend the winter at very specific areas. ie. A specific marsh or area that is lets say 5 KM wide along a certain stretch of coast etc.
My asking has some serious implications. For example Whooping Cranes in North America frequent the same several kilometer winter range at Aransas Texas every year. Having flown thousands of KM’s from their breeding ground in Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada. This of course makes management and protection much easier than if they were strewn along several hundred KM’s of Coast.
If the Orange-belly inhabits for the most part specific winter feeding areas. Would it be possible I wonder to train some Orange-bellies to utilize certain wintering areas set aside for them rather than trying to eke out an existence in some over-populated coastal section in the State of Victoria.
Thanks for your input in advance.
Cheers!
Don Kimball www.polytelismedia.wordpress.com ===============================
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Glenn et al
It appears to me a couple of things might assist. Ramped up artificial feeding stations in wintering grounds and of course an aggressive purchasing committee and financial resources to purchase important wintering areas once determined. I do see a major problem with training/encouraging birds to use specific areas to feed on natural food sources when they are depending on sporadic seed crops of various plants. I am hoping and praying much more in the way of resources get directed to this species as the days go by.
Cheers!
Don
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Interesting thoughts Don, I never cease to be amazed by the site fidelity of migratory birds! Reading OBP bands certainly is difficult on the mainland! Takes much dedication and lots of time – many days sometimes. A number of dedicated volunteers (and some staff when there’s money to employ people) do it though and from the bands we have recorded we do know that OBPs can certainly be very highly site faithful. A number of birds observed at the Western Treatment Plant have returned to the exact same patch (a mere few hectares or so) year after year (5 years in one individuals case; see http://birdsaustralia.com.au/images/stories/current-projects/obp/TUC_Jul09.pdf). So yes they so use specific sites; but that’s only half the story. OBPs are basically nomads (when wintering) their preferred habitats are highly patchy spatially and temporally (i.e. when they seed). They may stay at one site for a month or maybe a bit longer, but often they are often at a given spot only for a matter of days before they move onto another, then another etc. How many sites a given bird needs in a year we don’t know, but we’ve never identified the same banded bird at more than 1 wintering site in a given year (I think…). They clearly need multiple sites during the course of their wintering period. There’s actually not a lot really good habitat around given how highly specialised they (http://birdsaustralia.com.au/images/stories/current-projects/obp/Potential-occurrence-Maps.pdf), particularly not in recent years with the almost total loss of the western quarter of their range in the Coorong and Lower Lakes. To me training them is not really the answer, they are probably very good at finding suitable habitat themselves, we just need to provide them with enough to find. How much is the huge question, we have good habitat models now which is a good start, but it’s still a big question given temporal variability – just like it is for blossom nomads e.g. Swift Parrots. Feeding stations have been used on the mainland, but that’s been mainly to get the birds in a position where we can read bands, unlikely it would have a behavioural effect I reckon. Interesting to know about the Cranes. Managing just where a bird goes and not the rest of it’s range is a gamble though. In the mid-1990s OBPs up and left many of their traditionally important sites, in some cases sites where 20-40 bird flocks had been common were abandoned within a few years! (see Wingspan Sept 2008 p18-23). With climate change of course it’s probable that will happen with many habitat specialists. There’s a project just underway to look at that broadly – “Adaptation strategies for Australian birds” http://www.nccarf.edu.au/ARGP-tb .
________________________________ Sent: Saturday, 22 October 2011 7:21 PM
They seem to frequent the same areas each year, those that are found, but I’ve no idea if they’re the same individuals.
They’re so strewn along the coast that most are unaccounted for. Unlike a bird the size of a crane, they’re a bit hard to find, and even harder to identify individuals.
I think feeding stations are being tried, but I have no idea how successfully.
Peter Shute