On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 06:46:56PM +0930, Chris Watson wrote: >
I expect Harry Recher is right about most of what he says but he can be careless about facts. In the video he suggests that Superb Fairy Wren have gone from abundant to rare in Sydney over the last 40 years – saying it was the second bird he saw stepping off the ship in Sydney but you’d to struggle find one now in the suburbs of Sydney. This is incorrect, wrens are still conspicuous in many Sydney suburbs and surveys show this: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/surveys/results-superb-fairy-wren.cfm I’m not sure where in Sydney Harry Recher’s ship arrived, but you can still see wrens at King St Wharf where the cruise ships dock in the CBD.
Its hard to say how SFW abundance has changed in Sydney suburbia in the period Harry Recher is talking about without data like the Backyard Bird survey for past decades. Ricki Coughlan posted here details a few years ago of a wren survey on the Northern Beaches where I recall SFW were absent or very scarce in quite a few suburbs, but SFW do seem to do well in the denser inner suburbs.
I’ve noticed this carelessness before. Years ago Harry Recher put in a paper: “Red Wattlebird which were abundant in suburban Sydney gardens as recently as the 1970s are now rare”. Again not true, over much of Sydney, Red Wattlebirds are common & conspicuous: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/surveys/results-backyards-autumn2006.cfm
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