A unique bird community on Wansey Road

I really ought to make a bird map of my neighborhood. It's amazing how accurately I can predict the species I will see within a given city block. I know that if I want to see New Holland Honeyeaters, for example, I need to take a walk down Wansey Road in late September. If I want to see lorikeets, I head out around sunset along any number of streets southeast of Centennial Park. To see grey butcherbirds, I take an early morning stroll from Belmore Road to Centennial Park. The path just south of Coogee Beach is ideal for wattlebird-watching, though I can point out a few trees around Randwick where I often hear them calling. For yellow-tailed black cockatoos, I head to the northern edge of Centennial Park in early winter. There's a healthy population of Common Mynas on Waratah Avenue. For welcome swallows, head to Alison Park at dusk.

Long story short, wherever there is green space in this city, there are birds. But less obvious is the surprisingly high fidelity of different species (or of individual birds) to a single strip of land.

Wansey Rd. runs directly along the western edge of the Royal Randwick Racecourse.

Image: Google Maps.

One of my favorite local examples is the unique community of birds that shares a stand of trees running along the western edge of the Royal Randwick Racecourse. If you take the path along Wansey Road on a spring day, as I sometimes do, you can expect to see the following birds (from most to least common):

• Common mynas
• House sparrows
• Welcome swallows
• Rock doves
• Spotted doves
• Pacific black ducks
• Crested pigeons
• New Holland Honeyeaters
• Red-whiskered bulbuls
• Kookaburras

I saw all of these birds today (and others), within a matter of minutes. At this time of year, about 30 minutes after sunset, you will also see flocks of noisy corellas in this area, making a racket in the tall eucalyptus trees nearby.

So what is it that draws this unique community of birds to this particular strip of land? It's a community I've not encountered elsewhere in Sydney.

No doubt the Racecourse grounds play a key role. They provide tall grasses and a thick protected thicket, plenty of shade and roosting spots, nearby fruiting and flowing plants (like lantanas, bottlebrush and grevillias), and a water source in the form of an open water tank - all tucked safely away behind a barbed wire fence.

Mynas, crested pigeons, and house sparrows share space in this dense lantana thicket.

Spotted and rock doves prefer roosting spots in nearby residential eaves and under this man-made shed (you can see them on a perch if you look closely).

The Pacific black ducks spend their time on the rim of this large water tank (photo taken February 2014).

 New Holland honeyeaters and Red-whiskered bulbuls spend their time in these trees (photo on right taken November 2013).

Corellas occasionally visit the tallest eucalyptus trees (these are on nearby High Street).

Kookaburras perch in these trees to hunt the insects and critters down below (can you spot the kookaburra in this photo?).

And welcome swallows feed on the insects overhead. (This is the only shot I have of welcome swallows. It was taken in February 2014 near Alison Park, about a 10-minute walk from Wansey Rd).

I suspect the birds on Wansey Road are able to live together in a diverse "man-made" ecosystem because the species all fill separate niches. But it does leave me with many questions. For example, to what degree are different species competing for limited resources? Are the mynas, pigeons and sparrows leading to the spread of the invasive lantanas? How will this impact other species (including insects) in the long run? What does it mean that this community exists near a busy road? Is noise pollution a detriment to breeding? Do the Racecourse managers value this diverse ecosystem? What would happen if they decided to develop the property?

The more birdwatching I do, the more I appreciate how unique all the little micro-ecosystems around me are, and the more questions I have.

Return of the channel-billed cuckoos

After wintering in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, channel-billed cuckoos usually make their first appearance in Sydney around mid-September. I caught my first (and only) sight of one today over Centennial Park, calling out in its distinctive squawk, with several currawongs close on its tail. I didn't get any pictures.

Despite their rise in Sydney over the past 30 years, and their frequent inclusion on lists of commonly sighted backyard birds, surprisingly little is known about channel-billed cuckoos. This may be because they are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other birds (like currawongs) whose young they easily out-compete. Or maybe it's simply because no one has made it their life's work to study this species. With more bird species than ecologists in Australia, it's no wonder why we still know so little about species ranges; patterns of distribution; breeding cycles; and diversity - in appearance, behaviour, genetics, bird calls. (As some wise people - like Bill Bryson - have noted, "it's not a biodiversity crisis, it's a taxonomist crisis.")

I have compared birdwatching and astronomy in a previous post. It's no coincidence that these are two of the rare disciplines where amateurs can (and do) play integral roles. When the subject under study is as vast as a galaxy, a continent, or a branch in the tree of life, scientists need all the help they can get.

I have an image of my retired self setting up bird monitoring equipment and making a go of it as an amateur researcher. I wake up early in the mornings and relax in my favorite bird hide as the fog lifts. I find pet projects and publish papers as an "independent scholar" (like these guys). And I contribute in some significant way to making sense of the vast unknown.