By Courtney Webber

The regent honeyeater (Anthochaera phrygia) is Australia’s most threatened songbird and is listed as critically endangered under international legislation. Habitat loss and attacks from other birds are the main reasons for the rapid decline of regent honeyeaters.

Fellow student Jack Stodart and I spent three days gaining work experience with ANU PHD student Ross Crates, gaining knowledge on the threats facing regent honeyeaters, and strategies for their conservation. We spent time in both Capertee Valley National Park and Goulbourn River National Park, home to regent honeyeaters.

Noisy minor control site

Ross Crates is a part of the Difficult Bird Research Group (https://www.difficultbirds.com/), a group of researchers studying Australia’s most endangered birds. These researchers coin these birds as “difficult” because they are hard to detect and move around wild and rugged terrain. One of the main issues for difficult birds like the regent honeyeater, is that by the time researchers can collect data, it is often too late to act.

Our first stop on our trip was Capertee Valley National Park. Unfortunately, on our arrival Crates informed us the regent honeyeaters had not yet arrived, potentially due to a lack of flowering blossoms. We walked through the valley, where the yellow box (Eucalyptus melliodora) had been cleared along the river flats. Yellow box blossom is a critical food source for the regent honeyeaters, and it is important these trees are replanted. In previous years Crates had taken ANU students out to Capertee Valley to plant yellow box, of which we could see slowly growing along the river flats.

Walking alongside cleared river flats with Stodart and Crates

Crates also pointed out the mistletoe (Amyema cambagei) growing on the river she-oak (Casuarina cunninghamiana subsp. Cunninghamiana), another key food source for regent honeyeaters.

Our second stop was Goulbourn River National Park, where we visited a biodiversity offset site (offsetting a nearby coal mine). The offset site was being used to assess the effectiveness of culling noisy minors (Manorina melanocephala). We surveyed a culled site, and a control site on the property, taking notes on the bird calls we could hear in a five-minute period. So far, it appears the culling has been effective in minimising the number of noisy minors and strengthening the numbers of regent honeyeaters and other songbirds.

Noisy minors are ‘edge specialists’, sticking to the edge of woodlands.

While in the field we used our limited reception to listen to Ross Crates being interviewed on the news about his detection of regent honeyeaters in the lower Blue Mountains (http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/critically-endangered-bird-at-risk-from-govt-dam-wall-proposal/10194042). Crates detected regent honeyeaters near the planned extension of the Warragamba dam wall. The proposed extension of the dam wall has the purpose of lowering the risk of flooding, however it poses a risk to the habitat of the regent honeyeaters, among other species.

Regent honeyeaters are a difficult species to conserve, however data collected by researchers like Ross Crates is creating greater understanding of the threats facing Australian songbirds, and strategies to mitigate them.

Photography: Courtney Webber