If you are wondering what these critical habitat zones might look like, Dr Kathryn Eyles of Canberra Ornithologists Group described “clump-style, highly diverse planting” would yield top benefits for birds, including Gang-gangs. “What they need is structural complexity,” Ms Cooney said. “Within the city, what we have left is big trees and mown grass, which doesn’t provide what most of our woodland birds need. As Canberra has spread and suburbs have intensified, many of our species have lost their habitat, or been left in small unconnected patches of the landscape where they can’t persist in the long term. “In more recent years, it’s urban development.
“If we go back a hundred or so years, the primary threat was grazing,” she said. Rosie Cooney, head of conservation research at the ACT Government, explained exactly how we got here. “We also have three vitally important, threatened ecological communities: Natural Temperate Grasslands, Yellow Box/Red Gum Grassy Woodland, and our Bogs and Associated Fens.” “The ACT has 30 native animals and plants listed as ‘threatened’, including the Earless Dragon, the Superb Parrot, the iconic Gang-gang Cockatoo, the Northern Corroboree Frog, and the Ginninderra Peppercress. If you come across a new distinctive Gang-gang please give it a name and add it to this gallery of distinctive beauties, by adding it as a sighting.“We have all been confronted by what we saw in the State of the Environment report that was released earlier this year,” said Ms Vassarotti. Gang-gangs are so dextourous that any physical banding or marking of birds is frought with difficulties, so we are really relying on you for this important information. In addition to local movement, your sightings will help tell us how far birds may travel in a day or two to access bird seed feeding points and how important (either in a positive or negative way) this feeding may be to maintaing Canberra's Gang-gang population. Please keep an eye out and report any sighting of these birds. We hope to learn more about how Gang-gangs move through the landscape from further recordings of Baldy and other Gang-gangs with distinctive features, such as Pie (with one eye), Jake (with the peg leg) and the distinguished Goldfeather. Nearly all we know about local Gang-gang movements has come from reported sightings of the distinctive male "Baldy" who travelled up to 4km to forage when feeding two chicks in the nest. Please look-out for distinctive Gang-gangs The Red Hill Regenerator site also has a link to a guide to Gang-gang nesting behaviour which give clues as to what to watch out for at the beginning and as the breeding season progresses. If you could report any such activity that would be fantastic. From now till mid October is when Gang-gangs are most noisy and active in their search for a nesting hollow so it is a good time to keep an eye out for any Gang-gang activity in or near a hollow. The page also has a summary of the outcomes to date from the nest hollow citizen science research.
A summary of the Gang-gang diet report and a link to the full report can be read and accessed at the bottom of this page Thanks to all who have provided records for the citizen science Gang-gang diet and nesting ecology studies, We have considereably expanded what is known about the Gang-gang and have informed many conservation and planing actions.
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