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

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

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 😊

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!

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

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

powerfulowl@birdlife.org.au

https://www.actforbirds.org/ratpoison