Report on the 2018 Spring Surveys - 25th-28th October

Updated: Oct 16

Spring has Sprung - and many Survey's have been done.

The 2018 Spring Survey weekend, had good birding weather – not too hot; not too cold –

and not too windy!

Surveys:

Sixteen people took part, five from off-island including one who came all the way from Bangkok to give us a hand. This was a good turn out of King Islanders but significantly lower visitors and skilled birders. Consequently, we had fewer teams, we all had to work pretty hard and not all the sites were surveyed. But most were and, as usual, we all had fun getting about the island, meeting some of our land holders and loving the added bonus of King Island in full spring flowering mode.

Best birds seen:

Indisputably the Swift Parrots.

They are still on the island so have been here feasting on the flowering Blue Gums almost 3 weeks after we spotted them and they were first reported in Currie. The wonderful Kevin Vang who came from Bangkok took some great photos - no mean feat as they trully are 'swifties.

Dinner and guest speakers:

On Saturday evening 22 gathered for a great dinner and talk fest at Bischoff’s Café. Jenny Lau and Lindall Kidd from BirdLife Australia updated us on the current Recovery Plans for our Critically Endangered KI Scrubtit and KI Brown Thornbill. Lindall explained that all the successful threatened species recoveries to date, have all had active involvement and champions from the local communities.

King Island's very own Fred Perry then inspired us all by telling the story of his ‘enlightenment;’ how he went from a tree removing farmer to a tree planter. So the competition is on. We know KI is better than the rest of Australia in many things, so how about we prove we are better in this too and work to help with the Recovery of the four critically endangered species that utilise KI; our very own KI Scrubtit and Brown Thornbill and the visitors who depend on the island to help them along their journey - the Orange Bellied Parrot and Swift Parrot - and of course all those birds who live here and we so often take for granted.

Enrich Your Lives:

Plant for the Future’ A workshop was held on Sunday morning at Frogshack Farm. Farmers, gardeners, anyone interested in improving the beauty and productivity on ‘their place’ were encouraged to come along. Presented by Carmen Holloway and Kate Ravich it was a great workshop with everyone learning and gaining insights into different and more sustainable methods of planting and producing bounty for all - including birds and wildlife. Eleven women and two blokes attended. Come on guys. What’s up? This isn’t just women’s work. It’s for all of us. Kids too.

A bit about Swift Parrots:

Like Orange Bellied Parrots they are Bass Strait migrants, travelling north as far as the Northern Territory during winter and returning to Tasmania to breed in the spring. This is only the 7th official recording on King Island although it is likely they are here much more frequently and no doubt been calling in from time to time for thousands of years. Now declared critically endangered, there are only about 2000 individuals left. A recovery program is in place focused on their nesting sites in Tasmania, where the Sugar Gliders are causing havoc by raiding their hollows and people have been removing their essential habitat. A lot is still not known about them though so the Recovery Team were very interested to hear they were on KI.

Speaker Profiles

Lindall Kidd: is the Threatened Bird Network (TBN) Project Officer at Birdlife Australia. The TBN is a national program aimed at saving Australia’s threatened birds through community engagement and direct recovery management. Lindall has a Masters degree in Ornithology from the University of Oxford UK, and is currently undertaking a PhD in the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group at RMIT, funded by the NESP Threatened Species Recovery Hub. Her PhD research investigates messaging strategies to engage people in threatened species conservation. Lindall has worked on a multitude of threatened bird projects, including breeding shorebirds in Arctic Alaska. Prior to Birdlife, Lindall was Bird Conservation Coordinator at Massachusetts Audubon in the USA.

Dr Jenny Lau: manages BirdLife Australia's Preventing Extinctions Program which aims to protect and recover some of Australia's most threatened birds. She first visited King Island in April 2018, and is working with the King Island community, government agencies and species' experts to develop a long-term recovery program for the King Island Brown Thornbill and King Island Scrubtit.

Kate Ravich: has been watching Australian birds for 40+ years and working with BirdLife Australia in a number of honorary and volunteer capacities for over 20. She is the co-founder of the Birds in Backyards Project - a program that brings home gardening and bird conservation together - that won a Eureka Prize for environmental education in 2007 and has gone on to become one of BirdLife's most important on-going national projects. She holds a degree in Adult Community Education and graduate certificates in management and ornithology. Since 2004 she has owned a 500 acre covenanted property on King Island where she lives and works.

Carmen Holloway: is a keen horticulturalist and naturalist with a special interest in botany, healthy landscape function and the integration of food farming with natural systems. She operates a family beef cattle enterprise with partner James and has two decades experience observing King Island’s unique environment, through interaction with the local Natural Resource Management Group, Field Naturalists and visiting scientists in many fields. Following completion of a Permaculture Design Certificate in 1999, Carmen travelled overseas to Asia and the United Kingdom to consolidate her learning. On return she designed, and together with James began the conversion of 15 acres of the farm to ‘The Frogshack.' Now a diverse and abundant polyculture, it incorporates an indigenous plant nursery, garlic production, home veg gardens, fruit orchards, avocado plantation, native wetland and wild zones, all of which compliment and enhance the beef farm.’