24 Urban Birds and Optimism - with Jacinta
Celebrate the birds and environments around you.
This episode is about urban birds, conservation optimism and Banyule Flats in Melbourne.
Jacinta Humphrey is a PhD Student with the Research Centre for Future Landscapes at La Trobe University. Her research focuses on the impacts of urban development on the birds that share our suburbs. Jacinta is passionate about creating and maintaining habitat for wildlife in our cities, and hopes that her work will contribute to a greener, more biodiverse future.
Available on your podcast app or listen below.
Links
* Jacinta's research - scholars.latrobe.edu.au/j2humphrey
* Jacinta on Twitter - @HumphreyJE_
* Jacinta on Instagram - @jacintahumphrey
* Jacinta on LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/jacinta-humphrey-phdcandidate/
* Aussie Bird Count app - https://aussiebirdcount.org.au/resources/
* Banyule City Council - Banyule Flats Reserve - www.banyule.vic.gov.au/Events-activities/Parks-and-reserves/Banyule-Flats-Reserve
Recording of an Eastern Spinebill was shared by Marc Anderson and licensed from www.wildambience.com
-
Kirsty: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were Australia's first scientists and teachers. This episode was recorded on the country of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I would like to pay my respect to Elders, past and present. And any other First Nations person from around Australia and the world joining us today.
Kirsty: Welcome to Weekend Birder - I'm your host, Kirsty Costa. Today we are going to zoom in on urban birds, the birds that live alongside us in our cities and towns. Jacinta Humphrey is here to share her smarts with us and here is how she discovered her love of birdwatching.
Jacinta: I am actually someone who didn't grow up birdwatching. It's something that I discovered a bit later in life. So I studied Science at university and I went on and did my Honours year and I became really interested in animals that live in our suburbs and our cities. And I started to notice that one of the main groups of animals that are living in that space and in our backyards are birds. And once I started noticing them, I just realised that they were everywhere and I couldn't stop noticing them. I probably wouldn't consider myself a birdwatcher. Actually, I guess I'm more someone who studies birds that live in suburbs and cities and notices birds. I'm interested in all kinds of animals that share our human dominated spaces, not just birds.
Kirsty: As Jacinta started to notice the wildlife sharing the urban spaces around her, she realized that she didn't need to go far in order to enjoy birdwatching.
Jacinta: I find that you don't actually have to go out to a beautiful national park. You can actually birdwatch just in your own streets, in your own backyard if you're lucky enough to have one or even off your own balcony. And this is a really great way to start because it means that you can get familiar with identifying some of the more common species that you may encounter, both visually so in terms of what they look like, but also based on their calls. And then when you do get a bit more confident, you can branch out and visit some of those really pretty pristine national park areas further away from the city. Even in really heavily modified areas where you've got lots of houses and shops and roads, there's still a great diversity of bird species that are living there. So it might not look like fantastic habitat, but I guarantee you're still going to see a range of different birds.
Kirsty: Jacinta said she is constantly delighted by what birds are living alongside us.
Jacinta: I'm always really pleasantly surprised about what turns up. Even if the habitat doesn't look that great in a particular street or your local park (maybe there's lots of exotic trees there or just not a lot of shrubs), I'm always surprised at what is still persisting in those areas. Especially for some of the smaller species of birds like thornbills or spinebills - they can suddenly appear. And I find that there's also always something new throughout the year. There's a few different species that you'll only see in the winter months or others that will turn up more in the breeding season in spring or early summer. For example, Pied Currawongs, Gang Gang Cockatoos and Eastern Spinebills tend to be more common in the winter months here in Melbourne. They'll drop off once things start to warm up in spring or summer.
Kirsty: Jacinta just mentioned Eastern Spinebills and I wanted to linger here for a minute because they are one of my favourite birds. Actually, every bird is my favourite bird. But still, let's pause here for a moment and appreciate this little bird... with its long curved beak, and white chest and throat, which has a little red brown patch in the middle. It can be tricky to tell the male and female apart so here's a tip. Look at the crown of its head. The female's crown is grey and the male's crown is jet black. Remember how Carol told us in Episode 14 that there are approximately 83 species ofhoneyeaters living in Australia? The Eastern Spinebill is one of them, and you may see this bird from Cooktown in Queensland all the way down to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. They love heath, forest, woodland and might also be able to thrive in your backyard if the conditions are right. I love to watch Eastern Spinebills flying around my parents garden in Melbourne, feeding on insects and the nectar of grevilleas and correas. They sometimes hover a bit like hummingbirds. So cute! They have very distinct call that sounds a bit like this...
<Eastern Spinebill call>
Kirsty: Jacinta is doing her PhD in ecology at the Research Centre for Future Landscapes at La Trobe University. Her research focuses on the impacts of urban development on birds (like the Eastern Spinebill) that live in suburban Melbourne.
Jacinta: One of the key things I found is that as soon as we have increased numbers of houses within a suburb, we're seeing quite a dramatic loss of bird species and it tends to be particular species that we are losing from these areas. There are some birds that are very well adapted to living in our suburbs. They do really well dealing with all the disturbances that come with urban areas, and then there's others that just don't cope as well. They struggle to find food or nesting material. Maybe they're more vulnerable to predators. So these are the kinds of birds that tend to disappear. They're often species that we might find in forests or woodlands, and they're really having trouble hanging in there in our cities. And over time, what this tends to lead to is a bit of a shift in the community composition. So that means that we lose some of these smaller native birds and we start to see more and more introduced species. So birds that are originally from parts of Europe or bigger and more aggressive native birds. So things like wattlebirds, Rainbow Lorikeets or butcherbirds tend to move in and take over.
Kirsty: One of the reasons that I love birdwatching is because it really improves my mental health. When I hear amazing people like Jacinta talk about the human impact on birds, it can kind of chip away at the pure joy that I feel when I'm birdwatching. Yet it's something that I can't ignore, especially working like I do in education and conservation. I remember early in my birdwatching days, I got out of a map of Victoria to see where I could adventure, and all I saw were these tiny little patches of green on this giant landscape. There were limited areas of remaining forest and limited areas of bird habitat, and I felt even sadder. As nature lovers, we are all at risk of staying in that headspace of grieving for birds and grieving for their homes. So here's a thought for you, which my friend Fran is regularly reminding me of... We could spend all our time focusing on deficit, on what is broken and what needs fixing. And it's really important that we do some of that, especially keeping ourselves and others accountable for the state of the environment. And there's also another space that I think we can be in. This is a headspace of thinking about abundance, of identifying what is working, of where there are healthy homes for birds, where the good news stories are, and ensuring we also learn from all of that. This is optimism - the belief that not all is lost and that we all have the capacity and the solutions needed to help birds and their habitats and all wildlife. Jacinta agrees, and she leans into this every day in her PhD research.
Jacinta: The good news is I've been in touch with a number of different local councils throughout Melbourne and there's a really big drive or a really big interest in trying to bring bird species back to our cities. So councils are really keen to revegetate areas and go out and plant lots of native shrubs and increase canopy tree cover. That's a big thing at the moment and they're also really keen to reconnect existing patches of habitat and this will hopefully lead to more connected bushland areas which will have a really big impact for our smaller native birds.
Kirsty: One of Jacinta favourite places to visit where birds are thriving in an urban area is Banyule Flats on Wurundjeri Country.
Jacinta: So I really like to go birdwatching in Banyule Flats. It's an area of parkland that's actually in Heidelberg in north eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and it's a really heavily developed area. It's totally surrounded by suburbia, but you get in there and you would never know that you were 100 metres from someone's front door. It's just a totally different landscape. It's little patches of remnant grassy woodland, so you've got big old River Red Gums which are just beautiful and full of tree hollows for birds and other species like possums. And then there's also really big areas of wetlands in there as well. So there's lots of different birds that are visiting because there's such a great diversity of habitats available for them. So as you walk around, you can tick off a huge number of birds in only a couple of hours, which is really exciting, especially when you are in the suburbs so close to the CBD. I've seen a huge diversity of parrots in that area like Rainbow lorikeets, but there's also Musk Lorikeets, Little :orikeets, Eastern Rosellas are there frequently as well as Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, galahs, corellas, all kinds of parrots. And then also heaps heaps of the little guys as well. So you often see Superb Fairywrens, Brown Thornbills and lots of exciting little birds jumping about, which is always nice. There are heaps of waterbirds as well and I will admit waterbirds are not my specialty. It's something that I need to practice more. But there's a whole range of different ducks, there's cormorants and lots of different exciting things to learn and observe.
Kirsty: As part of her PhD research, Jacinta did 1500 bird surveys over one and one half years. A bird survey is when you count the number and the range of birds in a very defined area.
Jacinta: Some days were beautiful and I saw amazing birds and it was a lovely sunny day, other days less so. It is Melbourne, of course, and there were a lot of very early mornings, which is I think the worst thing about bird watching that you often have to get up at or before dawn. It's a real challenge and it has been a very long process. A PhD typically lasts around four years in the field of ecology, so it's a big time investment, but I'm slowly getting there. It's really rewarding actually, to be at the end stage of that now, to kind of see all of my results coming together and and to see that I'm getting support and interest from people like local councils who I guess are the end users for this type of information. I'm really keen to see my work actually taken up and read and considered and put into practice. I don't just want to see it sit on a shelf somewhere or locked away in some scientific journal because that isn't going to benefit the birds in the long run. So yeah, it's a long process, but it's very rewarding as well to be nearing the end.
Kirsty: Jacinta has experimented with lots of birdwatching tools as part of her PhD research and also her personal birdwatching adventures.
Jacinta: There's so many different tools out there, whether you want hardcopy books or an app on your phone. I tend to find apps are easier because they are not as heavy to carry in the field. So the one that I found the most useful is the one used for the Aussie Bird Count. It's simply just called Bird Count. Obviously during the actual Bird Count it has lots of different functionality about recording birds and submitting your data to BirdLife Australia. But outside of that time you can actually still use the app and it's really helpful because when you open it, it will ask you for particular information to help you identify whatever bird that you have seen so you can select the rough size of the bird, what kind of body shape it had. So it'll have different options. Maybe it looked a bit more like a duck, maybe it was more like a parrot. And then any colours that you observed on the bird's plumage as well. And it will kind of put all that information in and spit out some options and you can kind of scroll through them and say, "Oh, yep! I think it's that one". My best advice when you're first starting out birding as I did not that long ago, is to just start with the local birds, that's in your own backyard, in your street, walking around the block. And celebrate the common species that you see. There's often a lot of focus and emphasis on threatened birds, which is rightly so. They definitely need our help. But I think we need to get back to basics and celebrate all the species that we're seeing, especially the ones that are turning up in our own backyards and in urban areas, because in my opinion, they're just as interesting to watch and to learn about.
Kirsty: In upcoming episodes of Weekend Birder, we're going to meet some people (like Jacinta) who have fallen in love with local urban environments and the birds that live there. Many thanks to Jacinta for her commitment to the conservation and celebration of urban birds. Check out the episode notes or weekendbirder.com to read more about Jacinta's research and connect with her on social media. And thanks so much for everyone who's been leaving their review on iTunes so that other people can find this little podcast too.
