Shorebirds
August 3rd, 2011
Boat Harbour send off
WELL, IT WAS very miserable taking my last looks at those little Red-necked Stints and the cormorants and the gulls and terns of Boat Harbour today as I wrapped up my role in the survey project. Walking down the trail to the beach, my old friend the Australian Kestrel was there, just as he has been every week these past 5 or 6 years, but this time to say farewell. The pipits and cisticolas were there in force and the fairy-wrens were all very active too, bobbing about in the newly regenerated acacia scrub. I sensed that they had a mood of celebration as the breeding season approaches. Just to confirm the coming breeding season, the aural backdrop was filled with much trilling from the growing number of Fan-tailed Cuckoos making their ominous presence felt – I had a very nice view of one sitting on a fenceline when driving in to the top car park. more »
August 2nd, 2011
Seeing beneath the sediment
IT IS NOT UNCOMMON for naturalists to believe that the selective forces in nature are obstacles and difficulties which are heroically overcome by individuals which pass their superior genes onto their kind, driving the patterns of diversity and abundance on earth in a process we call “evolution”. However, I don’t think it always works quite like that. I think that the struggle is at once a little more optimistic and elegant: a little more perhaps like water flowing downhill. The way I see it is that nature is an expansive thing, with organisms responding to the pressures of their environment by taking the path of least resistance – of not necessarily troubling over obstacles, but rather constantly and optimistically dashing towards new or favourable opportunities. By taking advantage of physical and environmental opportunities, adopting behaviours which play to their strengths, organisms carve out a passage of survival, living to pass on their genes which, if favourably adapted to their behaviour and surroundings, become extant throughout the population. It’s more like that John Lennon song where he sings “there’s no problems, only solutions”. more »
July 10th, 2011
New breeding locations found for bird on the brink
Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Image © 2011 Chris Collins.
ONE OF THE WORLD’S great iconic shorebird species, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper, is also the most threatened. There are perhaps only dozens of pairs of this species remaining and captive breeding programs under way. How successful this can be for a tiny migratory shorebird is yet to be ascertained, so it is encouraging to hear that a survey conducted by Heritage Expeditions – a Birdlife International “Birdlife Species Champion” – has uncovered hitherto undiscovered breeding locations on the Chukotka coast of Far East Russia. Read more on the BirdLife International site »