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The Powerful Owl Project
December 2020
2020 Season Round Up
A hearty hello to all as we run down the slope to the
end of 2020. This year has been a year of challenges,
heartbreak, loss and healing, but also reinforcement of
the goodness in people and the strength of community
in Australia. Our fire affected communities are still recovering, rebuilding and are very much in our
thoughts as Summer ramps up. In Sydney the beating
heart of the Powerful Owl Project, our citizen scientists,
have sweated and been tick-bitten, cried a great deal but also laughed with giddy delight at the antics of our
Sydney Basin Powerful Owls in 2020. Amongst all the
tribulations of COVID, flood and bushfires our PO
Project owly empire has selflessly continued to survey our nocturnal birds. Hats off to you POP family. Your
efforts in conjunction with financial support from our
project partner Lane Cove Council have paid off in
these ways:
- the identification of more new breeding territories
this season than we have recorded in the last five
years, bringing the tally of known territories from
214 in 2019 to 239 in 2020
- the opportunity to provide 57 different advocacy actions to temper vegetation management,
clearing, building and burning in New South
Wales and Victoria to protect 45 different
Powerful Owl territories
- providing data to develop two new cut-in hollows
targeted for Powerful Owl breeding
- consultation around habitat building for four
major urban developments in the Sydney Basin
- a chance to provide education about owls, nest
boxes and vegetation management to over 500
members of public via in person and online
events with media outreach to +2000 people.
For we BirdLife Australia science folk the best
outcomes this season have been advancing data
collection contributing directly to our understanding
of rodenticide use as a threat to urban owls, better
understanding movement patterns in dispersing owl youngsters and continuing to develop a network of
communication between land managers, the public
and scientists that benefits our declining owl fauna.
Our 2020 breeding season has been interesting
overall this season. Whilst usually we see nests fail in
the snap colds of early July, our early breeding event
meant that we lost chicks this season, rather than just eggs. This was distressing for owl parents who
were observed attending nests in highly agitated
states as per previous failures, and also sad for our
citizen scientists. However, it was interesting to document owls trying a second breed within the
season after an early failure, something we haven’t
recorded in the project previously.
In three locations we saw Sulphur-crested Cockatoos take over owl nesting hollows within one day of a
failed breeding. In one of our Lane Cove territories
we found the body of a very young chick that had
been pulled from the nest and dropped 10m from the
hollow entrance, confirming Cockies are still major competitors for tree hollows in the urban space. Our
Centennial Park owls that received such a lot of
media coverage this season
(https://www.centennialparklands.com.au/stories/2018/get-to-know-the-baby-powerful-owl-in-the-
parklands) were also plagued by cockies. Fantastic
photos collected by Francisco Martins documented
cockies entering the hollow whilst both Mrs PO and chicks were at home, with Mrs PO flying off after they
left.
https://www.centennialparklands.com.au/stories/2018/get-to-know-the-baby-powerful-owl-in-the-parklandshttps://www.centennialparklands.com.au/stories/2018/get-to-know-the-baby-powerful-owl-in-the-parklandshttps://www.centennialparklands.com.au/stories/2018/get-to-know-the-baby-powerful-owl-in-the-parklands
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2 The Powerful Owl Project
Whilst two chicks fledged at this nest, Kookaburras
attacking a chick soon after fledge, were very likely contributors to the early death of the second
fledgling. A similar scenario happened in Sutherland
in 2018, when human visitors at fledge caused the
Kookaburras to pay unwanted attention to the owlets. Herein lies a cautionary tale about human
impacts on fledging. We always need to be mindful
of our impacts on breeding birds.
Quick Statistics
A full breakdown of the 2020 season will be provided
in the December 20th talk but one of the most
interesting outcomes we have found is the shift from
single chick clutches in 2019, to double and even a triple chick clutch! We are monitoring more owl pairs
overall, but fewer of these pairs are breeding. There
was a heartening trend for chicks in double chick
clutches to survive past the first month post-fledge. Good news indeed. Our blended owl family described
later in this newsletter is one great success story,
with three fledglings raised successfully and all well
to date. Overall we are still seeing a declining trend
in our Sydney Basin owls.
Words from the People
Tune in to a project wrap up Zoom talk on Sun 20th
December at 7pm for full news on the Sydney PO
population 2020 breeding season. Places are capped at 100, so please register using this link:
https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx
?id=expDKyGaU0uJQ0oQ_2mXDeI4PEi31n5Oqt3rKx
4Vl6xUMUg5TVFUUjdaTVo5RjFGSzRMVVZOTUFXNi4
u
In the meantime, please read below some stories
from our citizen scientists who have put in many hard
yards this season to help our lovely owls and seen
some awesome things on the journey.
A Tale of Many Owls, COVID-style
Hi my name is Simon Van der veen, better
known as Simmo.
I’ve been a volunteer
for the Powerful Owl
Project (POP) for a few years now.
Basically, I’ve been
sticking to my
assigned area during this time and last
year I missed the
whole breeding
season because I
was in the Outback.
This year has been
completely different for everybody, owls included.
Covid 19 lockdown meant my local gym and swim centre were closed and nearly all social gatherings
banned. So what better way to spend this period
than looking for and monitoring endangered (and
awesome) powerful owls. Yay.
Trudging up and down creek lines and valleys certainly kept up some level of fitness and funnily
enough kept me pretty well socially isolated.
Curiously dark creek lines, mozzies and sewage pop
tops only seem to attract the denizens of the bush,
oh and crazy owl spotters, of course.
I learned quickly, after slipping into the first creek
and soaking my shoes and phone, that gumboots and
old work pants beat runners and jeans every time.
The first week of May I set out in hot pursuit of likely
owl roosting areas hoping to find owl pairs within
habitat suitable for breeding. Using the satellite maps
on my phone, I would find areas of thick bush, usually
along a creek line and then go check them out. These searches took me through areas of the North Shore
of Sydney and to the West that did not already
contain known owl territories.
MEASURE 2017 2018 2019 2020
Citizen Scientists
participating560 608 655 665
Known
PO territories181 212 214 239
Potential breeding
territories60 124 93 127
Pairs breeding 50 89 70 109
Chicks fledged 78 126 84 90
Sometimes
when
owling,
owls are not
all you find!
– Jenny Z
https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=expDKyGaU0uJQ0oQ_2mXDeI4PEi31n5Oqt3rKx4Vl6xUMUg5TVFUUjdaTVo5RjFGSzRMVVZOTUFXNi4uhttps://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=expDKyGaU0uJQ0oQ_2mXDeI4PEi31n5Oqt3rKx4Vl6xUMUg5TVFUUjdaTVo5RjFGSzRMVVZOTUFXNi4uhttps://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=expDKyGaU0uJQ0oQ_2mXDeI4PEi31n5Oqt3rKx4Vl6xUMUg5TVFUUjdaTVo5RjFGSzRMVVZOTUFXNi4uhttps://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=expDKyGaU0uJQ0oQ_2mXDeI4PEi31n5Oqt3rKx4Vl6xUMUg5TVFUUjdaTVo5RjFGSzRMVVZOTUFXNi4u
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Dec 20 3
Once a pair was found
it was a matter of going back for weekly visits to
try and find that super
all-important nest
hollow tree. Checking too often could mean
the owls change their
behaviour which could
interrupt their breeding activities and that
would have been the
last thing I wanted.
Using non-invasive techniques is a must.
The less light the
better, even red
torches can have an
impact. Believe me when I say it is possible
to find and monitor owls and their nest hollows with
no torch or infrared light whatsoever.
Finding nest hollow trees take time, patience, a routine, commitment and sometimes just a hint of
good fortune too. Never luck! Luck is sitting in your
warm, dry home looking out the window and seeing
a nest hollow right there. Good fortune is standing in one spot along a 1 km creek line in the cold and dark
for 1 hour and hearing a chick trill from a hollow
nearby. The feelings when finally seeing an adult owl
fly into or out of a hollow or hearing the chick trilling
inside were elation, joy and some relief. I felt totally rewarded for the work that went into finding the
chicks and what the project is trying to achieve.
Reporting these findings to Beth and knowing we
could alert the land managers to this special tree, helping safe guard it during the breeding season and
hopefully longer. This will go a long way to giving
these awesome, majestic and threatened owls a
better chance at living alongside us for longer
(despite everything we are throwing at them.)
Lots of sites
turned up
nothing but the lure of the next
creek line, which
could contain an
owl was too
much to ever stop looking.
What I was able
to find during
the 5 months was 18 owl territories containing 5 single owls and 13
pairs. 10 of these were breeding pairs and I managed
to find 7 new nest hollow trees and 3 nest hollow
areas. Unfortunately, 3 of these nests failed. Out of the remaining 7 nests, 5 successfully fledged 1 chick
each and the other 2 both fledged 2 chicks each. I
saw a total of 31 different adult owls blessed with 9 white fluff balls of joy. Four of these territories also
contained Australian boobook owls.
What else happens while out in the bush looking for
owls? Well I was spooked by countless swamp wallabies crashing through the bush, in turn I
spooked a poor sleeping bandicoot, got hit in the
head by a sugar glider (this I was actually grateful
for considering it could have been an owl saying hello instead) screeched at by many raucous white
cockatoos, pooped on by an incontinent possum,
copped a fair few mozzie bites, even more midge
bites, half a dozen ticks, saw some amazing hidden waterfalls, received a few odd looks from locals out
on their nightly walk, 2 leeches, a couple of echidnas,
saw no snakes, no bunyips, no nude walkers, found
1 sleeping lizard and a white bellied sea eagle in a
gum tree.
What a way to spend my time during a global
pandemic which hopefully was a once in a lifetime
occurrence. Looking
after our threatened wildlife through
volunteering with the
POP has been a
rewarding experience and many thanks go
out to Beth for sharing
all her insightful
knowledge and
passion. Furthermore, thanks to all the
wonderful volunteers
and leaders who give
up their valuable time for this much needed
project. If you are thinking of signing up, please do.
Our wildlife needs all the help they can get during
these changing times.
Happy non-invasive and rewarding owling, regards
Simmo 😊
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4 The Powerful Owl Project
Four Chicks and an Adoption…Probably!
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been watching
an interesting situation play out in the urban
bushland in North Western Sydney. After an evening
when four chicks were seen together with an adult, a
family which fledged two chicks, has consistently been seen with 3 chicks. The two adults have been
feeding all three and all 3 appear to be strong and
healthy.
On October 14, a spur of the moment decision to
check on a Powerful Owl territory, led to us being ‘in
the right place at the right time’. As we passed
through the territory that we had gone to check, there was no trilling there, but we could hear trilling
coming from the direction of the neighbouring
territory. It was full darkness. As we approached, it
was apparent there were multiple chicks, but we were very surprised to discover how many! As we
were pulling out our red torches, the sound of the
trilling was converging on a spot close by. When we
located the owls in the torchlight, we could see a
writhing, bobbing mass of bodies. As we made sense of what we were looking at – 3 PO chicks and an
adult, lined up, side by side on a branch – another
PO flew in and landed on a nearby branch. The
conversation that followed went something along the lines of “What the…? It’s another chick!! No one’s
going to believe us. Lucky there’s two of us here to
see it!!” They were all together for almost half an
hour. Early on, two of the chicks flew to a branch near to us, and for the rest of the time they were there,
perched side by side. The adult didn’t come over to
them and we didn’t see them with food. The other
two were given pieces of carcass, and when the adult left, they were both flapping clumsily as they tried to
simultaneously eat and not fall off the branch.
In a visit to the area the next day, in one territory we
found two adults and 3 chicks in close proximity. This territory had been monitored regularly by another
observer and was known to have fledged two chicks
this season. In the neighbouring territory to the
north we found two adults and one chick. Only one
chick had ever been seen or heard in this territory
this season, although this territory hadn’t been visited as regularly as the other, and it’s more
difficult to monitor. In the territory much further to
the south the pair had one chick and this was still
there with its parents.
There were many questions. For some of them we’ll
never know the answer. What had brought all those
chicks together that night? Where did the extra one come from? Did the chick realise this wasn’t mum
and dad? Did the adults realise it wasn’t theirs?
Would they feed it? Would they kill it? Would it stay?
The nest trees in these two territories are less than 500m apart and the chicks could definitely hear each
other trilling. Maybe the chicks came together for
company, out of curiosity, or because mum and dad
were out, they were hungry, and it sounded like the neighbours had dinner!
We’ve been regularly visiting the trio of chicks. One
of our first tasks was to take enough photos to work
out how to tell the chicks apart. Luckily, they all had some distinctive feathers! Aside from a couple of
occasions when the interloper went missing for a day,
it has stayed with the family, and they have accepted
it and they are feeding it. The chicks tend to roost in a pair, with the third close by. But the two in the pair
keeps changing, so perhaps this ‘musical chairs’ in
some way contributed to the extra chick being
accepted. It also has a fairly pushy personality, which may have helped it be fed by adults that are not its
parents. Judging by plumage development, it is older
than its foster siblings, so that may have helped it to
be assertive enough to get fed.
It looks promising for all 3 chicks to make it to
adulthood. A couple of days ago, the three of them
were roosting in their usual configuration of a pair
plus one, and the interloper had a ringtail in its claws – they are growing up!
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Dec 20 5
Rehabilitation Stories
For those of you who haven’t managed to hear the ABC Conversations story with Richard Fidler have a
listen to Peggy’s story regarding the Higher Ground
Raptor Rehab Centre and what happened during the
fires. It’s humbling to hear a first-hand account of
how much change even one individual can make, and to learn more about how raptors are influenced by
fire.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversatio
ns/peggy-mcdonald/12413824
Brisbane Stories
Rob Clemens and his team of excellent people have
been pushing the Brisbane PO Project to lofty
heights. POP Brisbane have worked on some excellent modelling for fire impacts on large forest
owls. Rob and the team have also explored options
regarding creating a federal listing to create
overarching protection for Powerful Owl, to no avail.
Unfortunately, we just don’t have enough data for most of our forest owls to make a good case to lobby
for better protection for these species. Read all about
the many other excellent achievements of POP
Brisbane in the 2020 project report available from the Powerful Owl Project page in late December when the
draft report has been finalised.
In the meantime, read all about POP Brisbane’s
collaboration with QUT and a great foray into the world of eco-acoustics, somewhere POP Sydney may
expand to in 2021.
https://medium.com/thelabs/listening-out-for-the-
australian-powerful-owl-8bf729f4b759
Feathers and Green Corridors
A huge thank you
to everyone who
has collected and
sent in feathers for us to use in our
Powerful Owl
population genetics
project. Without your help we would not have the range of samples that we do.
The first part of the genetics project is well underway.
Feathers have been sampled and sent away for
sequencing and Drs Tracey Russell and Belinda Wright are now undertaking the analysis. This is time
consuming as there is a lot of information to work
through.
We are using single nucleotide polymorphisms, more commonly known as SNPs (pronounced snips). These
can tell us where there are differences between
individuals and between populations. For each feather
we will have somewhere between five and ten
thousand SNPs! After we have sorted through all of this
information and carried out a range of analyses, we will
have a measure of the genetic diversity of the PO’s and will know where in the landscape genetic diversity is
most similar or different, and so where we need to
build corridors to foster greater genetic diversity.
We have included feathers from all of the different areas you, the citizen scientists, have sampled,
ranging from Newcastle in the north to Nowra in the
south and out to Picton in the west and Sydney in the
centre. We have also included all of the chick feathers that have been sent to us and we will be working out
how related the PO’s are within these areas.
Watch this space for some exciting results early in the
new year. We will begin delivering training workshops for land managers, bush regen. folk and anyone else
who is keen to learn more in February 2021. Read
more on this project here:
https://www.birdsinbackyards.net/content/article/littl
e-feather-tells-big-story
We have been very lucky to
have been awarded an
Environmental Levy Grant from Ku-ring-gai Council, to
progress this work further in
2020-21. We are investigating
whether leafy suburbs really equal owl highways in the city,
and how genes are flowing
between the bush and the city.
More news on this as it comes
to hand.
Rodenticides
We talked previously about rodenticides and the
review of the use of these poisons being undertaken
by the regulatory body in Australia, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority
(APVMA). Despite growing evidence that rodenticides
are likely to be significantly negatively impacting our
owls the APVMA has decided after consideration of
more than 12 000 submissions, that no change to regulations regarding the use of first and second
generation rodenticides is warranted, although some
labelling will be changed. Unfortunately this decision
rests on a lack of data.
Here at POP we are doing something about this and
with generous support from a project donor and with
collaboration between Sydney Wildife, WIRES, National Parks the Australian Museum, Taronga Zoo
and POP we now have the first batch of samples we
can afford to analyse ready to go. Preliminary results
from post-mortems have been confronting, but we have pushed through this and collected samples that
will contribute to a multitude of projects including
beak and feather disease in raptors. It will be
interesting to see if the lab results
correlate with the physical symptoms identified in post-mortems, and excellent to begin disseminating
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/peggy-mcdonald/12413824https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/peggy-mcdonald/12413824https://birdlife.org.au/projects/urban-birds/powerful-owl-project-powhttps://medium.com/thelabs/listening-out-for-the-australian-powerful-owl-8bf729f4b759https://medium.com/thelabs/listening-out-for-the-australian-powerful-owl-8bf729f4b759https://www.birdsinbackyards.net/content/article/little-feather-tells-big-storyhttps://www.birdsinbackyards.net/content/article/little-feather-tells-big-story
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6 The Powerful Owl Project
some data to begin the process of changing laws to
better protect wildlife.
To sign up for our BirdLife Australia rodenticide
campaign, download
your free Owl-friendly garden
poster and get some
tips for controlling
rodents at your place go to:
https://www.actforbirds.org/ratpoison
There is still plenty to do before the 2021 breeding
season begins;
• hollow mapping in the landscape and
vegetation management following the Bushfire Royal Commission recommendations
• documenting the escalation of aggression
from other bird species,
• exploring the Biodiversity Conservation Act’s offset pricing of owls, and
• Sydney basin-wide threat mapping
are all on the agenda along with some more work on urban lighting, diet, nest boxes and urban tree
hollows.
Anyone with GIS skills on board – we need you and can pay in great cake! Get in touch if you can help
out.
See you on the flip side all. Stay safe, stay cool and
enjoy all of our wonderful birds. Beth Mott
Powerful Owl Project Officer
https://www.actforbirds.org/ratpoison