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echonews echo news
pilbaraecho www.pilbaraecho.com.au
Free Weekly 2-3 March 2013
Boom in dance students means more classes By Lea Cullen Lynes
DeckArts keep class numbers under 25 students per class, and even less in ballet,
DeckArts dance studio in Karratha recently held enrolment days for 2013 and commenced classes for term one. Due to the huge increase in ballet enrolments, Director Lea Cullen Lynes has created new age groups to limit the numbers in each class. DeckArts currently has 90 ballet students enrolled throughout all age groups.
• Allira Simpson
so that all students are offered quality training. The studio now offers ballet classes to 4 to 5-year-olds, 5 to 6-year-olds, 6 to 7-year-olds, 8 to11-year-olds and seniors. Miss Lea is very proud of the continued growth of DeckArts and is thrilled that Jazz, Tap, Lyrical, Acro and Music Theatre classes are also thriving.
Wildlife watch: Pied Mudlark IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is coming to Karratha. The UWA Test Centre is pleased to announce that an IELTS test will be conducted in Karratha on Saturday 23rd March 2013. For all information and how to apply for this test, please visit our website: www.ielts.uwa.edu.au or contact the IELTS office on (08) 6488 2904Please post all applications to: The UWA IELTS Test Centre, M438 35 Stirling Highway, Nedlands WA 6009. Places are limited. The Deadline for Applications is 11th March 2013 unless full before.
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The Magpie-lark (Grallina cyanoleuca), also known as the Mudlark in Victoria and Western Australia, is a conspicuous Australian bird of small to medium size. It is a common and very widespread bird both in urban and rural areas, occupying all parts of Australia except for Tasmania and some of the inland desert in the far North West of Western Australia. The Mudlark appears
to have adapted well to the presence of humans. In fact, it is neither a magpie nor a lark and is not particularly closely related to either, but in the light of modern DNA studies, is now grouped with the Monarch flycatchers. The Magpie-lark is around 26 to 30 centimetres long when fully grown and boldly pied in black and white. They are a familiar sight around the country sitting on telephone wires either alone or in pairs, or patrolling any patch of bare ground, especially foreshores or swamps, on their welldeveloped legs. The sexes are similar from a distance but easy to tell apart - the
female has a white throat, the male a black throat and a white “eyebrow”. Juveniles and immatures of either sex have the white throat of the female, the black eyestripe of the male and a white belly. Primarily carnivorous it eats all sorts of small creatures. The Magpie-lark can adapt to an enormous range of different habitats, requiring only some soft, bare ground for foraging, a supply of mud for making a nest and a tree to make it in. The Magpie-lark is aggressively territorial, and will fearlessly defend its territory against larger species such as magpies, ravens, kookaburras
Pilbara Wildlife Carers Association
and even the Wedgetailed Eagle. They are also known to attack people to defend their territory; such attacks occur usually within 60 metres of the nesting site. Native birds and their nests are protected under legislation, so if a particular bird is causing serious safety problems, contact the wildlife officer at your local Department of Environment and Conservation office. The wildlife officer can assess the situation and remove the culprit if necessary. Swooping birds are often dissuaded from swooping when they are being watched by the intruder, so placing some stick-on “eyes”
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on the back of your helmet could deter them. Holding a stick or umbrella over your head will often force a bird to keep its distance. Similarly, fitting a long orange traffic flag to the rear of the bike may work. Birds generally pair for life and defend a territory together. The nest is round, about 150 millimetres in diameter with vertical sides and is usually placed on a flat branch somewhere near water or on a horizontal beam of a telephone pole. The nest is made of grass and plant material thickly plastered together with mud and generously lined with grass, feathers and fur. Breeding is opportunistic and any time after rain in drier areas, and multiple broods are common when conditions allow. Both parents incubate a clutch of between three and five eggs. It is quite common for only some of the chicks to survive because sometimes the nest just isn’t big enough for all the baby birds, therefore one baby will sometimes push another out the nest and it is most likely that the chick will not survive the fall. Magpie-larks are one of the 200odd species of birds around the world that are known to sing in duet, each partner producing about one note a second, but a halfsecond apart, so that humans find it difficult to tell that there are actually two birds singing, not one.