Bird surveys of Pittwater Council LGA Reserves
Pittwater Council Local Government Area extends from the shores of Narrabeen Lakes, at Warriewood, to the top of Palm Beach. The area takes in the foreshores of Pittwater, part of Broken Bay, and extends westward into Kuringai National Park. The LGA takes in a broad range of habitat types, including mangroves, mudflats, saltmarsh, other wetland types, coastal dune scrub, heath, hanging swamp, wet sclerophyll woodland, dry sclerophyll woodland, litoral rainforest, subtropical rainforest and acacia scrub. All of these are represented in a healthy Council Reserve system.
Pittwater Council seeks to ensure that development and land use in the LGA is harmonious with the preservation of the reserves in the locality. This will be underpinned by a sound knowledge of the fauna and flora contained within the reserves and appropriate management of the reserves and surrounding urban, commercial and industrial infrastructure. To this end, a Fauna Management Plan is being created.
In 2006 I was contracted to conduct a 12 month survey of the bird life in 13 key local reserves and report on the numbers and status of all populations. The data and resulting report will form part of the Fauna Management Plan.
Each site was surveyed twice per season using methods appropriate to the habitat type. At the conclusion of the study a full report was produced for Council.
The contract also required that I deliver a series of talks on my research to various local interest groups. Topics were: "Bark foraging birds as indicators of plot viability", where I spoke on the habitat needs of bark foraging species and the necessity for bush corridors to link several reserves in the area; "The crows of Sydney's Northern Beaches", a look at the biogeography of Australian birds, emphasising the "Corvid Radiation", all with a local perspective and "Fairy-wren habitat use", a look at the findings of a preliminary study which grew out of this study and the Pittwater fairy-wren survey.
The period of this contract ran from August 2006 to October 2007.