New chicks for Carnaby’s cockatoos

Entry by Kath Howard

WWF-Australia President Denis Saunders has been studying Carnaby’s Cockatoos since 1969. In September he returned to Coomallo Creek  - the first place he ever went to study the cockatoos - to survey the population. This letter was sent by Denis to Panda Cottage in early October.

He will return to the same location in mid November to see how the new chicks are going and to find more about the nesting pairs that remain of this endangered icon of Western Australia.

A female Carnaby's black cockatoo flies overhead.

Speaking to Denis later, he said that while he was overjoyed at being able to return to old haunts, he was deeply concerned about the huge amount of land that had been cleared since last he came to Coomallo Creek.  Large scale clearing can have profoundly detrimental long-term affects on the population of Carnaby’s cockatoos.

Denis’ letter

Last month Rick, Peter and I had a wonderful trip to re-survey Coomallo Creek.

With the Department of Environment and Conservation’s Geographic Information System peoples’ help Rick was able to overlay my surveyed map of the tree hollows with Google Maps. With the geolocations on the car’s GPS, we were able to find every tree, or where they once were. We saw three nesting banded females.

With Rick’s great camera skills we were able to identify all three. Two were banded as adults and were at least 19 and 25. The other was banded as a nestling and was 19.

The November survey will be very interesting as that is the one where we will measure the nestlings, age them and check their health. My preliminary estimates are that breeding numbers are not much different to our 1996 survey, but that remains to be seen. The start of laying this year is within the range of past seasons; earliest July 9, 1984, and latest August 26, 1978.

What was really exciting was that Rick has demonstrated a great way to check banded birds. We used to check the females as they came out of the nest and then spend a considerable amount of time with a telescope trying to read the band. With bad light and windy conditions (as we had last month) it is very difficult. Rick, with his very long lens, photographed the three birds many times very quickly. Then in the evening we blew up the photos and read the band numbers.

Unfortunately this trip we were pressed for time and did not get a chance to examine every female that came out of hollows. Now that the trees are located and we know which need checking (many have gone so they don’t need to be visited) it will allow more time to check for bands. In fact, it would be a very valuable exercise to check every nesting female for bands and get some idea of the age structure. I hoped to do that this trip, but I know we did not examine every female closely enough to be able to say there were only three banded females out of the 29 we saw come out of hollows.

I hope the recovery team thinks this worth doing next breeding season. It will not be possible this season as the females will not be sitting when we go back. It has to be done when they are on eggs or very young nestlings.

The Coomallo Creek population is the only one I know of that one could get an idea of the age structure of the breeding females; essential information for managing vulnerable species.