‘Aussie birds’: a few further thoughts.................................. Edward Jackson

‘Aussie birds’: a few further thoughts

I received several enquiries for more information following my Indoor Meeting talk on Australian Birds in Stowmarket on 26 April, so I thought it might be helpful to share a few details on a couple of the topics I covered. I gave an overview of the Australian bird fauna and referred to some fairly recent work on the evolution and diversification of bird families. I showed a circular graphic, based on DNA analysis, listing bird families in relation to each other. This suggests that Swifts are much more closely related to Hummingbirds than they are to Swallows and Martins. Another nice example of this ‘convergent evolution’ is Australian Robins and European Robins: they look very similar, but their families are quite far apart genetically. Here’s a link to a summary of a paper that was originally published in the journal Nature: https://phys.org/news/2012-10-familytree-birds-reveals-evolution.html At the end of the talk I said that although visits to faraway places for birding or family reasons were always very satisfying, they do come with associated environmental costs – particularly if air travel is involved. For some time it’s been possible to ‘offset’ the CO2 associated with air miles (and other forms of emissions as well). For individuals, this involves making small personal contributions to projects around the world that help local communities invest in renewable energy technologies, tree planting and other positive actions. For more details of the principles behind this and the different types of certified projects on offer, take a look at the Carbon Footprint website: https://www.carbonfootprint.com/

Nightjar