The “Wings on King” autumn surveys were undertaken over the weekend of April 27 to 30 by seven teams and a total of 27 participants.
Of these, 11 were visitors mostly from Victoria, who came to King Island specifically to undertake these surveys, and 16 were from King Island.
It is wonderful to see the number of King Islanders becoming interested and proficient in bird identification and monitoring, growing over time.
Wings on King surveys started seven years ago with six King Islanders. The dinner where the Moonbird Festival raffles were drawn, was also well attended with about 25-30 people gathering in the Cataraqui Room at the King Island Hotel.
All data has been entered into Birdata, the massive bird databank that is run by BirdLife Australia. All data is available to anyone who wants to see it.
I have been asked how we use this data. Some of you may remember that in 2021 we had the first five years of data collected and analysed professionally by science analysts. This gave us a picture of what birds we have on the island, a broad idea of population sizes and where they live.
This analysis provides a baseline against which we will compare future results.
This analysis, however, will only be done at five-yearly intervals with accumulated data from those years, so the next isn’t due until 2026. That way we are always comparing apples with apples so to speak, and there is sufficient data to make reasonable comparisons.
Some new sites will be added to the regular surveys over time e.g., the newly fenced revegetation sites, and some will be dropped as we have learnt as much as we need to know about the kind of birds that utilise those areas.
But overall, these surveys provide us with good data that measures the sustainability of King Island in the long term.
Birds are great indicators of just how healthy a place is, as the various species, between them, use all the various natural components of that area for food, nesting etc. So, the more bird species that use an area and their abundance (number) tells us a great deal about the overall health of that place.
For example, on King Island, all fully functional forests should have Bassian Thrush present.
These guys are easily confused with female blackbirds, but their scaley colourings are a giveaway. They are mainly ground dwellers foraging in the leaf litter and debris of the forest floor for bugs and beetles.
They are quiet and often hard to see, but their presence indicates that the forest is healthy. They are worth aiming for if you are restoring a remnant but will take quite some time (years) to use a newly generating site.