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For much of their young lives, Australia’s captive-bred orange-bellied parrots are kept under close watch by scientists trying to save one of the country’s most beloved critically endangered species. Though numbers fluctuate, there are only around 140 left in the wild. Every animal counts.
But each winter, when young birds are released along Victoria’s coastline in the hope they meet with parrots that have migrated from Tasmania, they effectively disappear. Dispersed across hundreds of kilometres, the young birds have been fiendishly difficult for volunteer bird watchers to find.
Orange-bellied parrots being released. The wire from the transmitter is just visible next to the tail of the front bird.
Scientists are trialling new trackers, not used in Australia before, that collect high-resolution information about the location of released orange-bellied parrots. Tiny one-gram radio transmitters have been painlessly attached to the base of tail feathers of the 19 birds released, and will fall off over time.
“We know overwinter survival seems to be one of the major problems for this species,” says Zoos Victoria senior manager Michael Magrath. “These new trackers will help us to determine how we best protect them from extinction.”
One of only three migratory parrot species in Australia, orange-bellied parrots spend summers raising their chicks in hollow trees at Melaleuca, a small outpost in south-west Tasmania. As the weather cools, they fly hundreds of kilometres through autumn skies to the southern coast of the Australian mainland.
To bolster their numbers, captive-bred birds have also been released on mainland Victoria for seven years, at locations where there is good salt marsh and coastal habitat. The partners in the program, which include Zoos Victoria, the Victorian government, Birdlife Australia and Deakin University, want to trial improved methods for tracking the birds.
Previously, they tried tiny, solar-powered backpack transmitters that weighed 2 grams, but found they were probably too heavy for the birds. This new trial uses a system called ATLAS and uses four receiver stations at Lake Connewarre near Geelong to pick up the signal from the transmitters, allowing them to track the bird’s movements 24-7.
This is the first time the ATLAS tracking system has been used in the Asia Pacific. It has been used in the Netherlands to track red knot birds, as well as in Israel to track bats and analyse their behaviour.
“It pinpoints all the parrots every eight seconds and gives us an amazing insight into which parts of the habitat they are using and what they use it for,” says Deakin University Professor Don Driscoll.
At one point it looked like orange-bellied parrots were destined for extinction.
But numbers have slowly increased and this year about 140 birds are expected to migrate north from their Tasmanian breeding grounds – the fourth year in a row that more than 100 parrots have set off on that journey.
“As one of the world’s rarest birds, it is fantastic that we have been able to grow the population of the orange-bellied parrot and ensure future generations can enjoy this beautiful species,” said Victoria’s Minister for the Environment, Ingrid Stitt.
Orange-bellied parrot numbers have declined over many years for reasons that include human land clearing and destruction of their habitat, predation by feral animals and changed fire frequency.
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