FRIENDS OF THE WESTERN GROUND PARROT A community group dedicated to the recovery of an unusual WA bird which could soon become extinct.
Newsupdate no. 14
June 2005
SEARCH FOR WESTERN GROUND PARROTS IN NUYTSLAND NATURE RESERVE Since the April newsupdate, much has happened. Two trips to NNR have been completed. This project is being run by Birds Australia (WA Inc.) and funded by Lotterywest. The big news is that during the June trip, a new population of Western Ground Parrots was found. At present, only six populations are known: three in Fitzgerald River National Park, two in Cape Arid National Park, and now one in Nuyts Nature Reserve.
May survey The May expedition was fortunate to attract a full complement of volunteers (9), most of whom were well experienced in the bush, but not in ground parrot survey. The training sessions in Cape Arid National Park were very successful with everyone hearing several calls, some distant, some close. Surveying in CANP began where a bird (‘Arnold’s bird’) had been recorded in 2003. A bird was heard quite close to the original Point Malcolm Track site, and another about 1.5kms away. However, the birds did not seem to persist at any one site and very few calls were heard in the area surveyed. It was considered that the habitat was OK but not ideal, and that although a few birds were using the area they were moving about quite a lot, and could not be called a population. We moved camp to explore another area to the south west. The camp was right next to the beach which everyone enjoyed. One of our team was an expert fisherwoman and she kept us well supplied with fresh fish. One record from this area seemed good but we had to leave one day early due to bad weather and so we got no confirmation. Again the habitat seemed OK but not ideal, and birds, if there, would seem to be few and far between. More time needs to be spent in this area and further along the track closer to the Cape Arid NP border. Mount Ragged is in Cape Arid National Park. We had been told that there was some good WGP habitat on the lower flanks of Mount Ragged, and also that the CALM team would not have time to run a survey there. Four of our team combined their wish of exploring that area with surveying for WGPs in the heathland. They reported that the heathland looked structurally suitable for WGPs but none was heard. Andrew Chapman, one of the volunteers to go there, pointed out that it is probable that conditions become very harsh in summer, and this could be a limiting factor. One day was spent in a most unusual way. One of the team became disoriented at the commencement of the morning listening session on Friday 13 May. Despite well-organized and extensive searching by other team members, it became necessary to call in outside assistance to find the missing person. Esperance Police co-ordinated a search and rescue effort that ended at 2.15am with our missing person being returned to our camp fit and well to the relief of all concerned. We have reviewed our training and equipment . We have also expressed our gratitude to the Esperance police and the Esperance branch of the State Emergency Service.
June survey The team was little smaller, totalling nine for the first five days, then six. The training session in CANP was again successful though birds were not calling as well as in May. A dead cat was found in the CANP site. In NNR, the first few sessions were spent extending the survey of the Point Malcolm Track site, but no birds were definitely found until
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a new area was tried. Two of the surveyors heard several ground parrot calls. The next evening, all six surveyors, placed in the same piece of habitat, heard birds. More birds were found in subsequent sessions. The birds began calling early, and one of the calls was new to us. The area was not fully explored before the team had to leave two days early, again because of bad weather.
Another trip in spring? Initially only two trips were planned. However, the survey work in NNR is not complete. Also, there will be some of the Lotterywest grant remaining so that a third trip can be run. The funds can be stretched to a third trip because • • •
Trips in May and June were shorter than originally planned Some volunteers donated their camping and travel allowances CALM offered more practical support than anticipated.
Birds Australia has agreed in principle with running a third trip. Liaison with CALM and the South Coast Threatened Birds Recovery Team will be undertaken. If all goes well, the trip should be in late October or early November.
Cape Arid National Park WGP search program The seven planned trips have been completed and the CANP has been surveyed more thoroughly than ever before. Cape le Grande National Park and heathlands between the two national parks were also surveyed. WGPs were found to be in two areas only, both within CANP. Both populations were known of since 2003 though one of them proved to be much more extensive than had been discovered then (See April 2005 issue of our newsletter). The CALM Western Ground Parrot Recovery Project led by Research Officer Brent Barrett organized and operated these trips. (Brent is currently on holiday.)
Number of WGPs With the completion of the autumn and winter surveys east of Esperance, combined with recent surveys in the Fitzgerald River National Park, as well as in the Waychinicup- Manypeaks area and west of Albany, more information is now available than ever before. An unofficial calculation indicates that the number of WGPs really is close to, but below, 200.
A new postcard SOON One of the volunteers searching for WGPs in Cape Arid National Park in March this year was Wendy Binks. Wendy is an artist and spent some of her time in the field creating a ground parrot painting. Wendy heard several parrots, glimpsed one, and got a good feel for the habitat and the bird's lifestyle. All this has resulted in a very lively and attractive design which will, by late July, be available as a postcard from her shop in the Fremantle Markets: Stunned Emu Designs. Wendy became concerned about the ground parrot and plans to donate proceeds from sale of the card to the Friends group for use in work towards the bird's survival.
Wendy (centre) beginning work on the ground parrot painting in a survey camp in Cape Arid National Park. Brent Barrett watches closely. Heidi Longar, another volunteer, shares the table. The camp is in good Western Ground Parrot habitat, not the sort of place people would normally select for a camp. Photo: Arnold Morales
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Another bird, another culture‌. As all Friends of the WGP are aware, the Western Ground Parrot is perilously close to extinction. The following is extracted from an essay in The New York Times. It was written soon after the rediscovery in the USA of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, thought to have become extinct in 1944. The outlook for the ground parrot is not quite as gloomy as there is a large area of habitat (albeit mostly of unsuitable fire-age at present) in conservation reserves. Also the ground parrot is rarely seen, is less striking in appearance, is not competing for a desirable resource, and the humans it encounters are, nowadays, unarmed.
The Woodpecker in All of Us By JONATHAN ROSEN Published: May 3, 2005 "Second chances to save wildlife once thought to be extinct are rare,"said Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. Of course, chances to save birds not yet believed extinct are common, if sadly less appealing. But who doesn't love the idea of a second act, especially in America, where we are far more fixated on resurrection and new beginnings than on death and dying? The searchers have given us back a magnificent creature. Some 20 inches long, boldly patterned with black and white, the bird is so beautiful that Audubon likened it to a Van Dyck painting. I may never see it - though I certainly hope to - but it has new life for me and will live for other people who may never have even heard of the bird. They will want to protect its habitat and in doing so will, without even knowing it, protect the habitat of many other animals as well. All this is a great gift. Likening the bird, as Audubon did, to a work of art while it still haunted the forests of the South is charming; imagining that the bird is nothing but a work of art is overwhelmingly depressing. The discovery certainly brings with it a measure of hope for the bird, of course, but also for us. Though it is unclear if a breeding pair exists, we have suddenly been acquitted of murder, even if we still face a lesser charge of reckless endangerment for having logged the old-growth trees right out from under the bird. Before last week, the last official sighting of an ivory bill came in 1944 in an area near the Tensas River in Louisiana known as the Singer Tract because it was owned by the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Despite protests from conservationists warning of the bird's extinction, the Singer Company leased the land to a logging company in 1938. At times using German P.O.W.s for labor, the company went on to raze the forest. All birds live between worlds, but the ivory-billed woodpecker is like Persephone in Greek mythology, the goddess who spent half her time in the underworld and half on earth. This is not even the first time the bird has come back from the grave. Never abundant, the ivory bill was considered gone for good as far back as the 1920s, when a nesting pair was found in Florida in 1924. That pair was shot and stuffed by hunters. In 1932 an ivory bill was shot
in the Singer Tract, which led to the discovery of a tiny population that survived until 1944. The bird's disappearances gave it a ghostly life that it now carries with it back into the world. To a bird watcher, every bird has a kind of double existence. It is the bird you struggle to see and identify and gather into the scientific world of Linnaean nomenclature; and it is the wild, mysterious creature that lives beyond our ability to ever name or truly know it. The trick with birding is to see both things at once - the bird in the guidebook and the bird that lives beyond books. To see the Van Dyck painting as a bird that is also, as its lowly Latin name Campephilus principalis tells us, "principally, an eater of grubs." The great 18th-century ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, tells a story about shooting, but not killing, an ivory bill in order to paint it. Wilson locked it in his hotel room and when he returned an hour later the bird had all but hammered its way to freedom. Wilson was so impressed with the bird, which also attacked him, that he was "tempted to restore him to his native woods." He resisted temptation, however, and the bird died after three days of refusing food. The urge to kill and the urge to conserve do live side by side; they are our heritage and the bird somehow carries our double burden on its back. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that David Luneau, whose videotape of the bird clinched the spectacular rediscovery, attributed the ivory bill's survival to "the lands that hunters and fishermen have conserved." Among its gifts to us, the ivory bill can help us see ourselves as we really are, torn between our own desire to be free - to shoot and develop and cut down and expand and the desire to live among free things that can survive only if we are less free. With the double vision of birders, we still can recognize ourselves as the wild children of American fantasy, but also as the far less romantic, but equally biblical, stewards of the earth. The challenge now is to give the ivory-billed woodpecker a home - not merely in legend but on actual, American ground.
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Petra Volunteers for the Western Ground Parrot searches in Cape Arid National Park and in Nuyts Nature Reserve came from near and far. One volunteer from ‘far’ was school-teacher Petra Sommers. She met Brent, the CALM WGP Project research officer, while sailing on the Leeuwin. A visitor from Germany, Petra wanted to do adventurous things that would lead her into natural areas. To her surprise, she also became enthusiastic about searching for WGPs, enjoying the standing alone and listening intently as well as the camp life. So she volunteered for FOUR trips from April to June. Now she has heard more WGPs than most people, and will return to Germany very soon with, already, a dream of coming back. Petra enjoys cooking and delighted many with her potato salad.The recipe can be found on http://frozendogs.blogspot.com from July 1.
Colour or Black and White (e-mail or snailmail)? Those who receive the newsupdate by email get the full colour version. If you receive it by ordinary mail it will usually be in black and white. The photocopying is done at the CALM office Albany, at CALM expense and CALM also pays for postage. Volunteers help with the mailout. CALM supports the Friends group as it is part of their policy to encourage community involvement in conservation. We try to keep the ordinary mail list short, and do most of the mailout electronically. If you are receiving the newsupdate by ordinary mail but could now get it on e-mail do let us know. If you no longer wish to receive the Friends newsupdates, let us know that too.
Survey kit A comprehensive survey kit has been developed and prepared by Brent Barrett and his assistant, David Chemello. It comprises survey and record forms, an information sheet, a new CD of WGP calls recorded over the last 12 months by Abby Berryman, field sound recordist, and with helpful commentary by David; and a video on CD about the survey experience. The kit will be made available to anyone who has a need for it.
Have you got some Western Ground Parrot cards? To purchase cards, contact Anne or Brenda. The price is $1 per card. If they are to be posted, it will be $2 extra in Australia, regardless of the size of the order e.g. 10 cards are $12; 30 cards $32. A bargain!
Web pages Birds Australia WA Inc. has a web page for the Western Ground Parrot. Go to their website at http://birdswa.iinet.net.au and then access Projects, and Western Ground Parrot. There is another web page maintained by the Albany Bird Group: http://www.albanygateway.com.au/Topic/Environment/Albany_Bird_Watching_Group/Endangered_Birds/ The next issue of the WGP Friends newsupdate is due in August. Feedback is welcome. Contacts for Friends of the Western Ground Parrot Anne Bondin. Phone (08) 9844 1793; E-mail: albanybirds@hotmail.com Brenda Newbey. Phone (08) 9337 5673; E-mail: wgparrot@iinet.net.au Address: Albany Environment Centre, PO Box 1780, Albany, WA. 6330.
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