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| Regent Honeyeater - Capertee |
A dazzling
combination of vibrant colours explodes from a cluster of pink mugga
ironbark flowers. A Regent Honeyeater attacks the flowers with gusto
before another honeyeater, then another appears. An estimated 10–12
honeyeaters are present, flitting between ironbarks and yellow box
trees on a grassy woodland slope in Capertee National Park, on the
western fringe of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area in NSW.
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| Regent Honeyeater adult & juvenile - Capertee |
I had seen the
critically endangered Regent Honeyeater just three times over close
to 50 years of birding - once at Storm King Dam near the
NSW-Queensland border; once at Stanmore in south-east Queensland; and
once at Glenbrook, west of Sydney. To see them again at Capertee was
a joy. What was particularly encouraging was that two recently
fledged juveniles were among the group, so they had nested
successfully in the area. In another part of the Capertee Valley the
next day, I found a second group of 3-4 birds, so my life tally of
encounters with this species almost doubled in two days.
Extensive clearing
of its woodland habitat in south-east Australia for agriculture,
combined with an explosion in populations of the aggressive Noisy
Miner, has pushed this beautiful bird to the brink, with its
population estimated as low as 400-500, down from about 1,500 in the
1990s. BirdLife Australia, in co-operation with other groups, is
engaged in a well-targeted and energetic
program
to rehabilitate the habitat of the Regent Honeyeater and other
declining woodland birds, while a captive breeding program is trying to boost honeyeater numbers.
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| Box-ironbark woodland - Gwydir River, NSW |
Hundreds of people
are lending a hand with tree-planting in NSW and Victoria as part of
the Regent Honeyeater Project. It's one of Australia's biggest
volunteer-based conservation programs, with more than 1,800 hectares
of core honeyeater habitat being targeted for revegetation in north-east Victoria, Captertee Valley
and the Gwydir River area, west of Armidale in NSW.
Now, it is
possible the tide is turning. An annual survey organised in NSW last
August by BirdLife Australia – not long before I saw the birds in
Capertee - resulted in 53 sightings. This was significantly higher
than surveys over the preceding five years, when an average of 10-15
birds were counted annually. Fair-sized flocks of Regent Honeyeaters
were seen regularly in the Capertee and Lower Hunter valleys of NSW
in particular.
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| Revegatation project - Gwydir River, NSW |
In the Chiltern-Mt
Pilot National Park of Victoria, a former stronghold for the species,
increasing numbers of captive bred birds appear to be surviving in
the wild; 101 captive bred birds were released there in 2017, the
largest of five such releases. Two birds found in March this year in
Gippsland had travelled 200 kilometres since their release at
Chiltern in 2017. This follows another bird released in 2015 which
crossed the Great Dividing Range to South Gippsland in 2016, before
returning to attempt to nest at Chiltern in 2017 – a round trip of
540 kilometres, the longest recorded movement of the species.
Captive breeding
programs for endangered species
do
not always work, and may perversely have adverse consequences.
But the Taronga Zoo-based Regent Honeyeater program could be on track
following earlier challenges, when released birds evidently failed to
survive.
Captive bred birds
struggle to nest successfully; during the 2015 season at Chiltern, 64
per cent of nesting attempts failed to reach the egg stage. However,
more than 70 per cent of released birds were alive 10 weeks after
release, which BirdLife Australia's Regent Honeyeater recovery
co-ordinator, Dean Ingwersen, describes as an “excellent figure by
translocation/release standards”. Dean adds that the rate at which
released captive birds are being seen 12 months post-release almost
matches the rate of resightings of banded wild birds: “We think
this is demonstrating good long-term survival of released birds.”
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| Regent Honeyeater, Capertee |
Congregating in
flocks was a hallmark of the species; the birds I saw at Storm King
Dam, back in 1973, were in a flock of 15. Increasingly, however,
records of the species over the ensuing decades were of single birds,
pairs, or at best, small flocks. This reduction in flocking may
reduce the ability of the species to defend itself again hordes of
Noisy Miners, which are intolerant of other species. Field
researchers have established that controlling Noisy Miner numbers in
the box-ironbark woodlands favoured by Regent Honeyeaters boosts the
chances of the latter nesting successfully. The flocks just might be
making a comeback, with as many as 20 birds seen together in the
Lower Hunter.
It is too early,
however, to be popping the champaign corks. Recent increases in
sightings may be due to unusually good flowering events, and the
long-term picture remains uncertain at best. Populations of other
woodland birds such as Grey-crowned Babbler, Hooded Robin and
Black-chinned Honeyeater continue to decline. Conversely, numbers of
Noisy Miners appear to be ever rising, and keeping them in check in
the favoured haunts of the Regent Honeyeater is a huge logistical
challenge. With the species estimated to have lost greater than 85
per cent of its habitat to the bulldozer, extensive areas of woodland
continues to be cleared at unacceptable rates
in
Queensland and
in
NSW.
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| A sign in Capertee Valley |
Dean Ingwersen
points to new challenges, including the recently discovered problem
of nests being predated by sugar gliders and squirrel gliders.
Various research programs underway - in conjunction with captive
breeding, habitat rehabilitation and other measures - hold the key to
future solutions. Funding has been secured to attach satellite
transmitters to five wild birds to track their movements. This is
aimed at determining where the birds go to over summer, when records
of Regent Honeyeater are scant. Funding has also been secured for trial interventions at nests to improve breeding success, with nest
failure identified as a major impediment to the recovery of the
species.
Says Dean: “The recovery team has worked tirelessly over the past
couple of years to produce a robust and holistic recovery plan, and
we are incorporating new research findings going forward as they
arise... The whole recovery program is still a work in progress, and
not surprisingly we’ve had some failures so far, but we’re trying
hard to make our work as adaptive as possible.”
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| Regent Honeyeater - Capertee |
