In fact, this proved a much more effective approach since almost all known red-tail nests are on private land, because that’s where the big, dead River Red Gums still stand. I had planned for months of looking for nests in forests, but I quickly learned that with the help of the farmers who are familiar with red-tails, all my work at nests could be done on private property. To do this, I needed to understand how red-tails behave and vocalise at nests – which meant that I first needed to find lots of nests. If it worked, this would mean, in practice, that sound recorders at nests could provide us data on breeding behaviour and nest success. I set out for my first field trip in the spring of 2016 to find as many red-tail nests as I could, my ultimate goal being to develop a way to monitor breeding with nothing but standalone sound recorders. This habitat is vital to the red-tail’s survival. Image: Daniella Teixeira Roughly 58% of the stringybark that remains in Victoria continues to be threatened by fire. Direct nest monitoring by humans had proved unfeasible. My project came from the need for better methods to directly monitor breeding, because long-term data collected by the recovery team ( a collaboration of scientists, government, non-profit groups, farmers and other stakeholders) suggested a decline in the number of juveniles in the population. I began studying this population of red-tails in early 2016, as part of my PhD research. With no sign that the birds can eat anything else, and Buloke being too slow-growing to be planted for short- to medium-term gains, the protection of stringybark is vital to the red-tail’s survival. Buloke has suffered the most severe loss through direct clearing, but the roughly 58% of stringybark that remains in Victoria continues to be threatened by fire. The decline of good quality feeding habitat is thought to be the red-tail’s most significant threat. This particular photo is of a female red-tail. Image: Daniella Teixeira The South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo is currently one of Australia’s most endangered Black-cockatoos. The Red-tailed Black-cockatoos of Victoria’s south-west are a distinct sub-species, known as the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo. In terms of having a small population, it is second only to the Kangaroo Island Glossy Black-cockatoo, which sits at around 400 birds (and growing, thanks to an intensive recovery program). With the population now at about 1,400 birds, the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo is one of Australia’s most endangered Black-cockatoos. Unlike its counterpart, however, the South-eastern Red-tail hasn’t adapted to any novel food sources, thanks (at least partly) to its small bill. Like its fellow Forest Red-tailed Black-cockatoo in Western Australia, the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo is endangered. They nest most often in the large, deep hollows of very old River Red Gums, many of which were ringbarked in the early 1900s. They feed almost exclusively on the small fruits of stringybark and Buloke, to which their relatively small bills are starkly adapted. Their life history is inextricably tied to the landscape of this region, which includes the adjacent areas of South Australia. The birds here are a distinct subspecies of Red-tailed Black-cockatoo, Calyptorhynchus banksii graptogyne or the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo, isolated from others of their kind by thousands of kilometres. In Victoria’s far south-west, the Red-tailed Black-cockatoo survives in a fragmented landscape of stringybark forests within a matrix of agricultural lands.
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