Hi there Purple Crown friends,
It's Michelle here again. In the monsoonal climate of north Western Australia, the wet season rains is bringing everything to life! New leaves provide abundant food for insects, and booming insect numbers make it a great time for insect-eating birds to nest.
The rains have been slow to come this wet season. By the end of January we hadn't even had 300mm of rain at Mornington camp, where last year we'd had over 650mm by this time (check out the flood pictures in last year's February update!).
The Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens living along Annie Creek have been thoroughly enjoying the showers of rain, bathing enthusiastically in the droplets gathered on the pandanus leaves, enjoying their feast of insects, and occasionally picking up a piece of nesting material – only to drop it again.
Amongst our Purple Crown friends, there is quite a display going on. Romance is in the air as males confidently show off their magnificent purple crowns in the hope of winning a partner, and female breeders flutter by wearing the lovely dark grey crowns typical of their more demure breeding plumage.
Despite the colourful display of feathers however, until now there hasn't been quite enough rain and food yet to encourage more Purple Crown offspring into the world. This week though, things are looking up and we've seen half-a-dozen or so females starting to build nests. With a little more rain, we may even see them laying eggs in a week or so.
The season affects the younger Purple Crowns as well. The plumage of young males begins to darken and the rufous cheek patches that mark them as juveniles become a shade or two closer to the rich black found in mature breeding males. Even their crowns darken. The oldest and most adventurous amongst them are beginning to explore the world around their natal territory with a view to setting up home themselves.
We caught a two-year old male in the act of sneaking through the neighbourhood a few weeks ago when he made the mistake of flying into a mistnet that had been set up to catch Crimson Finches. Undeterred by this experience, we later discovered he had established a territory at the northern end of Annie Creek and had successfully attracted a female to partner with him! With a little more rain, even these new young Purple Crown lovers may soon start building a nest.
Why not log onto AWC's website and learn more about this and other projects taking place at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary. Please visit: www.australianwildlife.org
Happy New Year Purple Crown Friends,
As you read this the drama of the annual wet season in the Kimberley will be unfolding. At the time of writing however it is still building and the intense humidity is giving way to the occasional storm, providing AWC's scientists with some relief and a sneak preview of the tumultuous weather conditions to come.
Scorching hot wild fires in the late dry season are a constant concern for the AWC team, particularly when temperatures are extreme and the vegetation is dry as tinder: ready to flare at the slightest spark. Staff have to be on constant alert, but as the humidity rises, the risk of late dry season fires is significantly reduced.
Michelle Hall took this opportunity to undertake some research on the effects one of these late dry season fires might have had on a vulnerable population of Purple Crowns.
The Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens that inhabit the Pandanus along banks of Annie Creek and the Adock River luckily escaped the fire season unscathed, but a nearby river had an uncomfortably close shave with a fire at Mornington in late October.
Rivers and creeks with their water and greener vegetation sometimes serve as valuable fire-breaks, either stopping wildfires naturally, or being useful as a starting point for fire fighters to 'back-burn' a fire-break in the path of an oncoming wildfire.
The Throssell River acted as a natural fire-break for the Mornington wildfire, stopping a front of more than 20km in its tracks!
Michelle was interested to see how the Purple Crowns living along the Throssell River had fared after this close encounter, so she headed out there to survey the birds and vegetation along a section of the river that had been affected by the fire.
She discovered that although the fire had burned along the ground, in parts right to the very water's edge, the Purple Crowns and their habitat escaped largely unscathed. What a relief!
Being able to fly is a big help in escaping the immediate effects of fire, so the negative consequences of fire on birds usually relate to habitat loss. That is, after a fire they often have nowhere to hide from predators or to find food.
This wild fire had burned towards the river from the east but, fortunately, most thickets of Pandanus were on the west bank of the creek and were not affected by the fire. Even the few Pandanus clumps on the east bank escaped with just a few leaves singed brown.
With so few breeding birds left, any decline in the population of Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens is a significant blow. It was therefore a great relief to Michelle and the team to find that the Purple Crowns living on the Throssell River had survived their potentially fatal encounter with a late dry season fire.
Hello and welcome back to the Purple Crown Tracker.
Did you know that in the central Kimberley where Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary is situated, 85% of the entire year's rain usually falls in the four months from December through to March?
The Asia-Australian Monsoon, with its extreme wet and dry seasons, drives much of the ecology of northern Australia, including the formation of Purple Crown habitat.
As November progresses, the stage is being set for the dramatic commencement of the wet season. The harsh inland sun is beating down and heating the landmass of continental Australia. The rocks and sand dunes which have been warming up during the dry winter months are now radiating heating across the surrounding atmosphere and temperatures are soaring. As this hot air rises it pulls in the moisture rich air from the Indian Ocean. It is these north-westerly winds that bring the convective clouds and heavy rainfall each year to the monsoonal north of Australia.
Whilst a little 'unseasonal' rain does often occur during the dry season, this year hasn't seen much of that, so a few recent showers during the build-up to the Big Wet at Mornington is now having quite an effect on the birds that find refuge here!
Female Purple Crowns for example, are suddenly extremely focused on collecting nesting material. Meanwhile their partners dart about, encouraging with gifts of any tasty little morsels they can find. If this pattern continues, we may soon witness an early start to the Purple Crown's wet season breeding period.
Whilst nest-building and preparations for the Big Wet are a high priority amongst the Purple Crowns, Anja's attention has turned to defining their habitat requirements. This research is important for predicting where populations of threatened Purple Crowns might occur and also for identifying where AWC should focus its habitat restoration efforts so that we can improve the Purple Crown's chances of survival more effectively. We look forward to reporting on Anja's findings to you.
Come back next month as the storms break and we monitor the progress of these charming little birds.
In the meantime, please help us to secure the future of the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren, visit http://www.australianwildlife.org/Home/Support-AWC-Gifts.aspx and send an AWC e-gift to someone who cares.
Greetings Purple Crown Supporters!
Following on from last months’ remarkable insight into the tumultuous lives of Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens, there have been further dramatic developments in the lives of the two Purple-crowned Fairy-wren sisters: Azure-Emerald-Noir and Emerald-Yellow-Blue.
Unfortunately, the ‘happy family’ ending in last months’ update didn’t last. Not long after Emerald moved in with her sister Azure and her mate YOO, an older neighbouring female Purple Crown invaded their territory and lured YOO away.
The two sisters had little choice but to move on. A week or so later they appeared in territories further upstream. This time we found them competing against each other for the same handsome mate! For a few weeks we weren’t sure who was going to win.
In the end Azure won the male Purple Crown over. However Emerald didn’t do too badly either: she paired up with the older, more distinguished-looking Purple-crowned bloke who lived next door. Soon, the two sisters had happily settled in as neighbours and it wasn’t long before they were both nesting contentedly.
Life was looking pretty rosy for the Purple Crown sisters - until their chicks hatched. Then, once again, their world was turned upside down. As is often the case in the natural world, Emerald-Yellow-Blue’s nestlings sadly died and as her last chick departed this world, her fickle partner left her as well. He moved in next door with Emerald’s sister, Azure!
Undeterred, Emerald followed him, but it seemed he had developed a new affection for Azure and was intent on moving in with her. Emerald wasn’t welcome. She could only look on despairingly as the two of them preened each other’s plumage. She even found him feeding Azure’s newly fledged chicks! It soon became clear that Azure didn’t want her sister Emerald around either and their bickering eventually turned into a battle. The siblings fought it out, pinning one another down on the ground and chasing each other about. Azure won, but Emerald persisted in loitering about the nest for a while, until eventually she gave up and disappeared.
We started to worry about Emerald when our searches failed to locate her. Weeks turned into months, then one day we spotted a lonesome, female Purple-crowned Fairy-wren skulking about in another Purple Crown’s territory. To our great relief, three months after the big fall out with her sister, Azure, it turned out to be Emerald-Yellow-Blue. She was alive and well!
Now Emerald has been re-discovered, we can’t wait to see what she does next. We hold out hopes that she will secure herself a better match and establish her own nest yet. Stay tuned for more!
To learn more about the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren, and other AWC projects, please visit our website: http://www.australianwildlife.org.
Greetings Purple Crown supporters!
Welcome back to the Tracker. This month our observations of individual Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens living in the Mornington Camp area gave us some fascinating insights into the Purple Crown mating scene... if you thought dating was a minefield wait until you learn what a female Purple Crown contends with!
Two of the females we've been following for the past few years have led amazingly intertwined lives, often helping one another and sometimes competing for the same males!
AEN and EYB (named for the unique combinations of coloured leg bands that allow us to identify them, Azure-Emerald-Noir and Emerald-Yellow-Blue) are sisters, hatched from the same nest in August 2006. We'll call these sisters “Azure” and “Emerald” for the moment.
Azure and Emerald stayed at home for a year or so, until one day a female on the neighbouring territory left her mate and disappeared, making way for Azure and Emerald, along with a flurry of other Purple Crowned females, to vie for the new vacant position with the Bachelor on that territory.
Azure was soon seen flirting with this handsome male a few times – they even sang some duets together. He failed to appreciate Azure's allure however and paired instead with another, so the two sisters flew off to find breeding territories and partners of their own.
Azure and Emerald headed downstream on Annie Creek to the area where it joins the Adcock River. Emerald rather fancied a young male, called Yellow, who had just established a new territory. However Yellow's territory was without much Pandanus, the habitat preferred by Purple Crown's for nesting and foraging, so Azure rejected him and moved on. Eventually she settled a couple of territories away with an older mate called YOO (Yellow-Orange-Orange) who had a more suitable territory where the Pandanus was plentiful.
Emerald then showed up - with Yellow, the male her sister had previously rejected! -Emerald and Yellow soon settled down together. Things went well for a few months until suddenly another female Purple Crown appeared on the scene, kicked Emerald out and pinched Yellow for herself!
Unable to establish a breeding territory of her own Emerald settled in with her sister, Azure and her mate, YOO a few weeks later, taking a subordinate role in the group where she helped to rear her sister's new offspring.
All's well that ends well? Not quite. Next month, in a dramatic new twist, you'll learn about the intruder who turns Emerald and Azure's lives completely upside down!
Why not visit AWC's website to learn more about this intriguing little bird.
Greetings Purple-crowned Fairy-wren supporters!
Welcome back to the tracker. Its Anja here again! This month I will fill you in on our most recent work to discover new populations of the elusive Purple-crowned Fairy-wren in the Kimberley. Last month I wrote an update on our latest work in the southern Kimberley. We had some very exciting findings and managed to locate Purple Crowns living in areas where they hadn't been sighted for many years.
This tracker is about our surveys in the north of the Kimberley. We sure visited some remote and wild sections of rivers! These isolated rivers flow into the Indian Ocean at the northern most point of Western Australia. To get there we were back in the chopper again. Our mission was to find out how much habitat there was in the north and where the Purple Crowns were.
We surveyed many patches of habitat in the north but found that Purple Crowns are restricted to only certain parts of these rivers. The central Kimberley is most definitely emerging as the stronghold of the Purple Crown.
Meanwhile, in the Mornington population of Purple Crowns, we have been accumulating information about bird movement patterns, and, in particular, how far they travel from the territory they're born to set up their own breeding territory.
We find all the birds that establish their breeding territory within our core study area on Annie Creek and the Adcock River in the course of our daily monitoring, but we can't tell if birds that just disappear have died or found themselves a territory elsewhere.
Once a year, we do some broad scale surveys of the surrounding area. We have just started on the 2009 Dispersal Surveys and already we've found a few of our missing birds!
Two of the birds we've found are a mother and daughter that disappeared from the same territory. We have banded the breeding female with the code ESLB, (but for the moment lets call her Carrie), on the territory that she shared with her partner, a son who was coded LSRB (let's call him Leroy), and a young daughter, PSRB (who we will call Lucy). In September last year, Carrie's partner disappeared, leaving her alone with the two kids.
If a male dies, his son often inherits the territory and, sure enough, Carrie and Leroy paired up. But come the wet season, and breeding time, Carrie has disappeared. I suspected at the time that she hadn't died, but had left to avoid an incestuous nesting attempt.
We were only able to confirm this recently when we found Carrie, while we were surveying the Fitzroy River. She had paired up with a new male on a territory 2.2 km away from her original territory.
Carrie's departure meant that Lucy was left with her big brother Leroy, back on home territory.
In the week after Carrie disappeared, I saw Leroy feed Lucy - which was a little strange because she was over 6 months old and could fend for herself.
When I returned to the territory the following week I found Leroy all alone. I thought I knew what had happened: the food he had given to Lucy had not been inspired by parental care, but by courtship.
Like her mum, Lucy was not keen on breeding with a close relative, let alone her brother, so she left straight away! Once again, without finding her, we couldn't say for sure whether she had moved or died.
In the latest survey one of our field assistant's Jessica found Lucy with a partner and territory of her own - a whopping 12.1 km from her original territory!
This story however is not unique. We are starting to discover that one of the key reasons that Purple Crowns disperse is to avoid inbreeding.
At the end of our surveys we will be able to use all of this information to improve our approach to protecting these charming little birds.
Greetings Purple-crowned Fairy-wren supporters!
It's Anja here, just back from conducting the latest set of surveys for the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren in the Kimberley. This month I will tell you about what we found in the lower Fitzroy catchment.
The Fitzroy River is one of the largest and best known rivers in the Kimberley. It drains the southern section of the Kimberley plateau and runs to the Indian Ocean just south of the township of Derby. It is a grand river that runs through several spectacular gorges including the Sir John and Dimond gorges on Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary.
The lower Fitzroy once contained a great deal of Purple Crown habitat. Explorers and early settlers reported vast stands of cane grass on the river banks: a prime haunt for the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren. Sadly however, after sheep and cattle grazing were introduced, the river grasses soon disappeared and with them these endearing little wrens as well. Sightings of Purple Crowns haven't been reported in the area for decades, so we decided it was important to find out what the current state of their habitat is in now. So, after some initial planning, we took off in the chopper to conduct some surveys.
What did we find? First of all, we confirmed a high level of cattle damage, but to our surprise we also found some isolated stretches of cane grass!! Perfect Purple Crown habitat!
Could there possibly be wrens living there? We had to find out so we landed the chopper at a nice dense patch to take a closer look for ourselves. Surveying cane grass however, is easier said than done - it was impenetrable!
Undeterred, we decided on a second site where we could walk between the grasses and it wasn't long before our efforts were rewarded. There they were, a lovely Purple-crowned Fairy-wren pair living amongst the cane grass!!
This is a significant finding as it confirms that isolated groups of Purple Crowns have survived on the Fitzroy River and there is hope for their future.
Come back next time to hear more about our survey findings!!
Welcome back to the Tracker,
It's Anja here reporting from Canberra. Over the past few weeks I've been pouring over maps in preparation for my impending field trip to the Kimberley. This will be my last trip to northern Australia for this project and I will need to be highly organised if I am to accomplish all my work!!
My top priority is to complete mapping the location of Purple Crown habitat and populations in the Kimberley. Producing this map is vitally important as we need a detailed knowledge of where the species occurs and how much habitat it has so we can protect and manage it.
Already, we have systematically surveyed almost 2000 km of river in the Kimberley and have mapped exactly where each zippy little Purple Crown lives and how much habitat it has. But there are still three large catchments in the Kimberley that we haven't yet explored and where we hope to find as yet
undiscovered populations of
threatened Purple Crowns.
So next month will involve exploring rivers to the south of Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary, as well as the Drysdale and Carson River catchments in the far north of the Kimberley. These rivers are unchartered territory!
In the meantime, Michelle Hall reports that not all Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens have purple crowns! Females and youngsters look different to males, with a rich rufous cheek patch and a dark slate grey crown.
Males have the handsome purple crown that gives the species its name, but this is part of their seasonal breeding plumage. As winter approaches and the breeding season concludes they moult their purple feathers. Even when they're 'in disguise,' however, you can still tell males from females because they retain their black cheeks.
Just how long males keep their bright breeding plumage each year seems to depend on the conditions. In very dry years, they can be slow to acquire their purple crowns and in years where there is bountiful rain they may stay purple all through winter.
Come back next month to find out whether Anja has discovered any more populations of Purple Crowns!
Extra! Extra! Come and read about it. The first results on Purple-crowned Fairy-wren genetics are in!
Welcome back to the Tracker, wildlife and wilderness supporters!! It's Anja here and I am excited about sharing some of the latest results – hot off the genetic sequencer – with you!
The first round of genetic laboratory work is complete so I have started the task of unravelling the genetic secrets of the beautiful Purple Crowns. First on the agenda is investigating the relatedness between the two sub-species, of the eastern and the western, Purple-crowned Fairy-wren.
The leggy and longer tailed eastern birds live along the wild rivers that drain into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Whilst, the heavier western birds with their longer wings live along the Victoria River and remote rivers of the Kimberley.
So they look a bit different, but what more can the genetics tell us about relatedness of the western and eastern birds? Well, the genetics tells us that the birds in the east aren't much related to those in the west. In fact, it tells us that they are different groups. The eastern and western birds haven't been mixing with each other for a long time.
As they are so distinctive genetically, there must be a barrier that stops the two sub-species from mingling with each other. To identify the barrier we must examine the landscape of northern Australia where the illusive and beautiful wren lives.
Between the ranges inhabited by the eastern and western birds, lies a vast stretch of land that contains no rivers and therefore no habitat. So we know that 300km of non-habitable land must be too great for the fairy-wren to disperse across.
But how far is the little wren really capable of moving? The next round of molecular genetic laboratory work will tell us more about that.
Come back next month and see how we progress!
Welcome back to the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren Tracker.
The flooding which decimated so many Purple Crown nests at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary in the first part of the wet season has finally passed. The benefits of all that rain has resulted in an abundance of food for everyone to now enjoy. Michelle Hall reports that female Purple Crowns are making the most of this, instead of the usual 3 eggs to a nest, she is finding that this year Purple Crowns are regularly laying clutches of 4 eggs to a nest.
With the floodwaters receding, more nests are also succeeding and increasing numbers of little youngsters are around. When they first leave the nest (usually at around only 10 days old!), Purple Crowns have a short tail and don't fly very well. They are very vulnerable and need a lot of looking after by their parents.
The image here is of a male feeding insects to two hungry fledglings. Between feeds, they sit patiently in a secluded spot, hidden from danger. Surviving their first two weeks out of the nest is a major accomplishment for a fledgling Purple Crown, although they remain dependent on their parents for food for two months after leaving the nest.
Crimson Finches are also making the most of this season and can be seen nesting along Annie Creek as well. Olya Milenkaya, who studies these spectacular little birds has found nests with 7-egg clutches for the first time this year – they usually only lay 5 or 6 eggs. So the pandanus along Annie Creek is pretty crowded this year, not only with young Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens, but also with young Crimson Finches.
Turning now to South-Eastern Australia, Anja, reports again from the genetics lab at the Australian National University where she's been busy decoding the genetic secrets of this charismatic little bird.
To determine how much the Purple Crowns are related across their range, Anja has been sequencing short sections of the genetic code for birds that she captured in the Kimberley and comparing them to those she caught in the Northern Territory. As the results gradually come to light, the findings are getting more and more exciting. Already, she is starting to see distinct differences in the genetic code for birds living in the Kimberley in Western Australia to those living near the Gulf Coast in the Northern Territory.
Once all the DNA samples have been processed she should get a clear picture of how closely related the little Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens in the Kimberley are to those living 2000km away in the Gulf!!
So come back next month to find out more.
Hello, a very warm welcome back to the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren tracker, its Anja here.
As the Purple Crowns continue with their optimistic breeding attempts in spite of the continuing floods of the Kimberley wet season, I have been avoiding all the mud and humidity by working in a genetics laboratory at the Australian National University in Canberra.
I have swapped my field clothes and bird catching gear for a white lab coat and gloves and have been trying to unravel some of the genetic secrets of the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren.
Revealing this genetic information is vital for us to effectively manage the conservation of this beautiful species. It will help us to understand how the bird moves across the landscape, how related the different populations are, both in the Kimberley and across northern Australia, and also to give us an idea about how much inbreeding is taking place.
Over the course of my field work I was able to collect hundreds of blood samples from Purple Crowns living in many different areas across Northern Australia. So, over the past months I have been busy extracting DNA from each of these blood samples.
Once I have the DNA I can use laboratory techniques and sequencing machines to read short sections of the genetic code. Comparing this genetic code between different Purple Crowns will tell me how closely related the birds are to each other.
This is a very exciting time as we are breaking new ground in our quest to unravel the genetic secrets of this illusive little bird. Especially as the first results will reveal how closely related Purple Crowns of the Kimberley in Western Australia are to the Purple Crown populations living in the far east of the Northern Territory.
Come back next month as we start to uncover the Purple Crown's genetic secrets.
Welcome back to the Purple-crown Fairy-wren Tracker, its Anja here.
The wet season has arrived in the Kimberley in a very dramatic way! As it has across much of northern Australia, torrential downpours across the central Kimberley have turned creeks and rivers into raging torrents over the last month. Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary is experiencing some of its biggest floods in years.
For the team at Mornington the wet season is an exciting time of year for studying wildlife. Each year there are parts of the camp which are flooded when the Adcock River and Annie Creek break their banks. However, this year has been exceptional as the flooded rivers have washed away camp tracks, submerged vehicles, threatened buildings and sent researchers into a mad scramble to stop low lying items from being washed away.
The AWC team living at Mornington spend a lot of their time cut off from the outside world. Until the waters recede, the roads are impassable quagmires, rivers are raging torrents and the airstrip is waterlogged.
These big floods present significant challenges for the Purple-crown Fairy-wren too. When rivers are low, these energetic little birds spend most of their time foraging for insects in low growing vegetation and Pandanus palms that line the waterways. During a big flood like this one however, this vegetation can be submerged under metres of water. The little Purple Crown, must retreat high into the canopy of tall eucalypts and Melaleucas. For the Purple Crown, who generally prefers to stay within its own territory, it's a case at the moment of waiting in the tree tops for the floodwaters to recede, picking off insects and trying to escape the rising floodwaters. Sometimes it even means sharing their refuges with unexpected companions, like this pale field rat perched above the water - one of the lucky ones!
This flood also made life a little trickier for our researchers when the bridge was washed from its moorings and we had to find other ways to cross the creek. For the Purple Crowns however, their challenge is a daily life and death battle of survival. As the waters rose high above the Pandanus in the last week of January they washed away the nests of 17 females. Several females that started re-building their nests straight away soon saw them washed away again.
Amazingly, one nest with a brood of nestlings actually survived. By wading along the road through calf-deep water and perching on a two metre ladder that was almost fully submerged, we managed to reach the nest and band the three young chicks.
See you again next month - in the meantime, cross your fingers that these little Purple Crowns make it!
Happy New Year Purple Crown supporters. Welcome back to the Tracker. It's Anja here.
I have left the Kimberley and am now working at the Australian National University in Canberra. I am busy in the genetics lab working with DNA to figure out how Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens are related across the north of Australia. Cracking the genetics of the species will give us vital information for conservation management.
Meanwhile, the wet-season is building in northern Australia, with storm clouds rolling across the vast savannahs of the Kimberley. The dark thunder heads flash with lightning and crack with thunder as they release fat raindrops to quench a land parched by the long dry. The creeks and rivers once again rush with water and the vegetation erupts with fresh fluorescent green growth. The relief of the wet-season also creates challenges for many species.
The Purple Crown is faced with unpredictable floods as it attempts to nest along the rivers and creeks that channel the rains of the wet. Purple Crowns use dried grasses, leaves and twigs to construct small nests in the forks of low growing shrubs such as spiky pandanus. These shrubs grow close to the edge of waterways and often get completely submerged by flood waters.
Nesting at this time of year means taking a gamble as the birds can never be sure of when the next flood will arrive. If your nest gets washed away, it's a case of cross your fingers (or toes in the case of the Purple Crown) and try again.
It usually takes females about a week to build a nest, carefully choosing material from among the flood debris and then arranging it in the pandanus crown. Once she's happy with the result, she'll lay her eggs, one each day, until she has a clutch of three eggs She then carefully incubates as the babies develop inside the eggs until they are ready to hatch after two weeks.
At first glance, it seems that females do all the work at this stage, but it turns out that the males and other family members help out in their own way. Since the female doesn't have as much time for foraging, if other family members discover a nice fat insect, rather than scoffing it themselves they will often find the female and give it to her, a little present to help her out! Some females even beg for food from the rest of the family in between nest-building and incubation bouts. This may seem a bit demanding, but probably helps prepare them for the big effort they're going to have to put in once the eggs hatch.
Tune in next month as we take you through the lives of our Purple Crowns during the wet season in the Kimberley.
Hello and welcome back Purple Crown fans. It's Anja here!
In previous trackers, we've been so busy telling you about finding and tagging Purple Crowns that we thought it would be fitting to close the year by switching the focus a little and to fill you in on the fantastic time the winners of the Optus "Save them for a Song competition" had at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary recently.
Tracy Williams brought her partner Andrew Salter, and Jane Ellis brought her son, Finlay and partner David Bourke along for this once-in-a-lifetime experience at Mornington. Over the weekend AWC's scientists took them out into the field where they learned about AWC's practical approach to conservation. They also explored this spectacular area of the central Kimberley - on foot, in a canoe and in a helicopter!
We also spent an afternoon searching for Purple Crowns along Annie Creek. These little birds are carefully monitored by research scientist Michelle Hall in her Purple Crown breeding and behaviour study. The vegetation along Annie Creek is a dense tangle of pandanus, shrubs, melaleuca and figs making it difficult, for even the most experienced bird watcher to find them.
However, luckily Purple Crowns are highly territorial birds and they sing a unique song to defend their territory which I use in my favour. To draw them out from hiding I play a recorded version of their territorial song with a MP3 player and speakers. Any Purple Crowns within ear-shot fly quickly towards the call to determine who is 'invading' their territory. By using this technique we managed to observe a family as they flitted through the trees above our heads.
On the walk we also saw the Buff-sided Robin (another elusive riparian bird), Honey-eaters, Crimson Finches, a huge flock of Corellas and a Whip Snake as it slithered across the track in front of us. The weekend was completed by spending an evening watching the sunset across the red rocks of Fitzroy Bluff before dining at a magical location under the stars.
As the year now draws to a close and we all start to think about Christmas, I would like to thank you all for so generously supporting our research into the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren this year. With your help, we located 155 groups and tagged 319 little wrens. This important research will be vital to saving this beautiful bird from extinction.
Merry Christmas everybody and have a safe and Happy New Year!
Hello and welcome back Purple Crown fans.
It's almost the end of the dry season here in the Kimberley. As northern Australia's wet season looms closer each day, the time has now come to wrap up our field work for the season. What better way to close the season than to conduct some large scale helicopter surveys. This time we visited the Ord River region in the Kimberley's north-east, as well as the rivers that flow into the magnificent Walcott Inlet to the west.
We had heard about people reporting Purple Crown sightings on the Ord River in the 1990s, so we felt compelled to verify these reports and see if we could find some ourselves where we flew a long section of both the Bow River and the Ord River. Sadly, very little suitable habitat now remains - no wonder the little Purple Crowns are in decline.
Despite our best efforts and searching hard in sections of the river most likely to provide Purple Crowns with some refuge, we were unable to find any Purple Crowns. However we did witness an incredible life and death struggle between a large fresh-water crocodile and its Agile Wallaby prey. Luckily for the Wallaby, the wind from the chopper scared off the crocodile so the Wallaby lived to hop around for another day.
Our surveys in the west were a lot more encouraging. We found an abundance of Purple Crown habitat on the Isdell River where it forms the boarder of the spectacular King Leopold Ranges. This was a very exciting find! Three rivers further north: the Caler, Sale and Charnley rivers turned up less habitat but at least we now know where to focus our efforts.
When we stopped for lunch, we stumbled across an exquisite Aboriginal rock art site. We gazed in wonderment at the fantastic ochre renditions of Brolgas, Wallabies, Dingos, Snakes and Flying Foxes. This must be a very special place for our first Australians, so we treated it with our utmost respect. It was definitely one of the great highlights when on our mission this month.
Now, at the end of an extremely successful season, our tally now stands at 155 groups found and 319 birds captured. What a fantastic effort!!! So now Anja is off to the genetics laboratory to start working through all the DNA samples we collected. It'll be very exciting to see what turns up there! Tune in for more news next month.
Hi Purple Crown fans, welcome back to Tracker. Thank you for all your support. You are helping us to discover more about this beautiful bird.
This month we headed north and discovered a large population of Purple Crowns at Drysdale Crossing. We could see that the birds were breeding as a few of the females had brood patches and there were quite a few juveniles, which is a great sign!
After finishing in the north, we decided to work closer to home and boy did that throw up an interesting find! If you remember, back in June, I found lots of Purple Crowns along the Hann River on Mornington so this month we continued to survey the Hann River north of the property which is a long way from Michelle's banded population. You can only imagine our surprise when we found one of Michelle's birds. It was NOP, a female with black, orange and pink bands!! After checking the distance on a map we found she had traversed almost 70km of river distance. Wow, this is such a long way for a little bird to fly!! I'll let Michelle tell you about the events that led up to her leaving her old territory on Annie Creek.
Thanks Anja, Michelle here. NOP is a record-breaker among the Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens, having travelled the furthest distance ever recorded yet to find a territory to breed on! When she hatched in February last year, we had no idea what an adventurer she would turn out to be. She shares her nest with 1 brother and 2 sisters which is quite a big family for Purple-crown Fairy-wrens. Most nests commonly have only three eggs. With 3 older brothers and sisters to help Mum and Dad keep up with feeding all those mouths, all 4 nest-mates survived.
This big family suffered a huge loss 6 months later though when, sadly, Dad died. NOPs' eldest brother took his place, and most of the remaining family left, but NOP stuck around.
After four months, the eldest brother hitched up and moved in with the 'girl next door' - probably a better option than being paired to his Mum! The rest of the family then disbanded too. NOPs' younger brother moved next-door to help his older brother out. We thought NOP and her two sisters were gone, until Anja found NOP 6 months later. Who would have thought a little bird who usually would stay so close to home would traverse 70 km of river to find a place to settle?! Most Purple Crowns do what NOPs' brother did, which is to find a spot close to home, however NOP is truly exceptional.
Hi Purple Crown fans, Anja Skroblin here. Thanks for coming back.
The Purple Crown survey work has been extremely eventful since my last journal entry. This month I've been tackling the remote central and northern Kimberley in search of Purple Crowns.
The Kimberley is a wild and remote region that is larger than Tasmania and located in the far-north west of Australia with huge sprawling rivers which cut through vast stretches of savanna grasslands. Getting around this wilderness isn't all that easy. There are very few dirt roads and much of the river I need to survey is inaccessible by 4WD. So what I need to do is call for a helicopter and Butch Mayer is just the pilot for the job. With my mist-netting poles strapped to the base of the helicopter we flew hundreds of kilometres along these wild rivers as I mapped the riparian habitat with Jo Jo's help.
We landed several times along each of the rivers to conduct surveys and catch any Purple Crowns we found. Nestled under paperbarks in a dense patch of pandanus we discovered an incredibly beautiful and special breeding male. Whilst all other males have brown backs this male had a striking black band across his lower back! I can't wait to see what the genetics tell us about this handsome mutant male.
We found new groups of Purple Crowns on two rivers where they had never been sighted before, increasing our knowledge of the species distribution. We also had to fly close to several fires that raced across the savannas and were whipped up by the hot winds.
Our tally of Purple Crowns found now stands at 83 groups and 143 beautiful Purple Crowns captured (and released)! Thanks to your generous support I've been able to band these birds and are now able to monitor their movements.
Tune in next month to see what surprising new findings we've made.
Hi Wildlife friends, welcome back. It's Anja Skroblin here. This month we searched for Purple Crowns beyond AWC's Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary and into the lower catchment of the mighty Fitzroy river.
This area is important to survey because Purple Crowns were once common here but disappeared in the early 1900's when sheep and cattle grazing destroyed the vegetation that lined the rivers. I wanted to find out whether any Purple Crowns had returned home to this part of the river.
My field assistant Paolo and I started our survey work in Geike Gorge National Park north of Fitzroy Crossing. The local rangers gave us a tip off: Purple Crowns had been seen in the area. To our delight we discovered a large group of 6 Purple Crowns living in some dense cane grass along the towering cliffs of the gorge. What a fantastic start!
We then headed south-west and, after many days of searching, we found 6 groups of Purple Crowns on the Margaret River but none at all along the lower Fitzroy. This may mean they have a limited ability to re-colonise or the habitat hasn't regenerated sufficiently for the Purple Crowns to move back in.
Leaving the Fitzroy, we drove to the interior of the Kimberley to the awe inspiring King Leopold Conservation Park. Working along Bell Creek we discovered 9 groups of Purple Crowns inhabiting the dense, spiky pandanus lining the creek. What a successful month of field work! Our tally of territories found now stands at 61 and we've caught 122 Purple Crowns!!
Great news, Anja! It's Michelle here. Anja's journey highlights the fact that finding just the right place to call home - a section of creek with pandanus - can be a real challenge for Purple Crowns. Once they do settle in they fiercely defend their turf.
Purple Crowns do something very special to defend their territories: breeding partners team up to sing duets that warn both neighbours and wanderers alike that they are a force to be reckoned with. When partners see or hear an intruder, they quickly fly together towards it, perch side by side on a high branch, puff out their chests, and launch into song!
The intruder then knows the territory is occupied by a team determined to hang on to it. Pairs use 'keep out' signals, not only when they have a nest, but year-round, and from one year to the next. In fact it's rare for breeders to disperse and most birds are real homebodies, staying in the same breeding territory for their entire life.
Come back next month to hear how Anja goes conducting helicopter surveys in the north of the Kimberley. It's bound to be exciting, so come back and find out all about it!!
Hello and thanks for coming back! Anja Skroblin here again. This time I'm going to tell you about our successful Purple Crown surveys along the rivers in the north part of Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary.
Mornington is vast, so surveying the sandy rivers involves walking with heavy packs and scrambling through steep red sandstone gorges. After weeks of work, my field assistant Naomi and I surveyed over 30km of the Hann River and 40km of the Traine River. We found 35 new purple-crown territories! Some of these territories were defended by only one lonely bird whilst the biggest group we found had eight members. This group consisted of a mum, dad and 6 youngsters who are still at home.
Finding the Purple Crowns was only the first step, we still had to band them. After a mammoth effort our tally now stands at 46 new territories found and 106 birds captured and banded!!!
During our survey we also encountered brolgas, freshwater crocodiles and even dingoes.
Michelle also has news about BRN, a little Purple Crown who emigrated from the colour-banded population near Mornington Camp. BRN was first spotted when she flew into the net Olya was using to catch Crimson Finches. Olya was surprised to see BRN had no leg bands since all the Purple Crowns on Annie Creek are colour-banded, Olya knew this female must have just arrived, so she gave her a yellow leg band.
For the next two months BRN was nowhere to be seen, then in March, someone spotted her on Annie Creek. Over the following weeks, we spotted her on numerous occasions, each time in a different territory, lying low so as not to be noticed. Eventually she was accepted into a resident group as a subordinate female. She won't be able to breed, as only the dominant female in each territory nests, but at least BRN has found herself a home. If this feisty female bides her time, hopefully she'll eventually get a chance to nest herself.
Tune in next month as Anja heads off to survey more rivers in the Kimberley wilderness. Thanks for all your support to help conserve this beautiful bird!
Hello and welcome back. I'm Anja and this month we were given a tip off!! I'm now going to tell you about our survey trip to Spider Gorge. A botanist spotted a pair of Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens in the Gorge and, excitingly, one of the birds had colour-bands on its legs. That bird had flown over 27km from Michelle's study population - this is a very long way for an 11 gram bird! Michelle and I then had to find out who that bird was.
We paddled our trusty yellow canoe down the majestic Fitzroy River, leaving it at the entrance of the Gorge before setting off through the dense spiky pandanus. We surveyed all day and at dusk we still hadn't found Fairy Wrens! Where were they?
We decided it was time to find a spot to camp and made one last playback for the day. Would you believe our luck? Flying out of the pandanus, singing their duet, were the pair we had been looking for!! A beautiful purple male and our mystery long distance flyer BRN, a female with blue, red and black leg bands! We caught the pair as well as their son the next morning and only narrowly avoided a snake that slithered through the grass under the nets just as we were trying to coax the birds in!
It was an eventful day. We found 3 new groups of purple crowns, caught 7 birds and mapped the habitat in Spider Gorge, before paddling back up the river.
Come back next time to hear how many birds we find in our surveys of the Hann and Traine Rivers in the north of Mornington Sanctuary!
Hi wildlife friends, it's Anja here. This month we canoed down the mighty Fitzroy River to search for Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens. It sure was an adventure!
We set off early in the morning in our bright yellow canoe. We found plenty of Purple-crown habitat, so we stopped every 200km to play back Purple-crown Fairy-wren sounds. After only 15 minutes we found our first family of Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens living in the prickly green pandanus: a mother, father and two recently fledged youngsters! It was very exciting! We came back later to band their legs and take their vital statistics. This information is so important for our research into monitoring the health and location of Purple-crowns.
Shortly after this, our real adventure began as we suddenly found ourselves racing through rapids. All we could do was point the canoe in the right direction and hold on tight! Whenever we found dense vegetation, we did playbacks, then hurtled on through the white water rapids. By the end of an exhausting day we had surveyed over 25km of River, but only found one group of Purple-crowns. We'll have to investigate why the Purple-crowns don't call this section of river home.
It can be hard for Purple-crowns to find a place to call home, can't it Michelle? That's right Anja. Hi everyone it's Michelle here. I will teach you a little about "dispersal" by telling you the story of "YNP", a little male Purple-crown and his search for a home. YNP was born on 12 February 2007 so seven days later I tagged his legs with three yellow, black and pink bands. This unique colour coding system makes it easier to identify and follow YNP throughout his life.
YNP stayed at home helping out for nearly a year. In January 2008, he left his home on the Adcock River, and travelled upstream to Annie Creek - a favoured home for many fairy-wrens.
It must have been too crowded because in February I spotted YNP further upstream on Annie Creek. He was more than 5km away from his home territory! He didn't stay. In February and March I occasionally saw him hopping about in other fairy-wren territory. He tried to remain inconspicuous so as not to risk being chased off by the resident group.
In April, I then saw YNP skirmishing with a male Purple-crown who was insisting on keeping a big area of territory to himself. Even though YNP was being chased, he refused to leave. A few days later I discovered YNP had taken over half the resident male's large territory and stolen his female mate too!
The nights are getting cold in the Kimberley, so the new couple may not have time to nest before winter sets in. But when spring arrives, YNP and his new mate may have some chicks of their own. It will be very exciting to watch and see.
Hello and welcome! My name is Anja Skroblin. I am working on an important Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) project to help save Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens. Sadly, these strikingly beautiful birds are disappearing and they are now listed as vulnerable to extinction.
The first step in helping to save Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens is to find out exactly where they live. I'll be conducting expeditions across the Kimberley to locate populations of this little bird as part of my PhD studies. My field notes will be published online each month so you can keep track of where I've been and what I've been doing and you'll be able to watch as we discover and map new populations of Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens.
Initially, I'll survey every creek and river to find the size and location of all the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren populations that live on AWC's Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary in the remote Central Kimberley. I am also trying to work out how far this little bird will travel because that's really important to their conservation. I'll then broaden my search to include other rivers throughout the Kimberley.
I have some really exciting expeditions planned for this month, including a big survey for these birds from a canoe!
I would also like to introduce you to Dr Michelle Hall. Michelle is monitoring a breeding population of Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary as part of her studies with the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology.
Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary is a stronghold for the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren. They tend to live in crowded family groups in thickets of pandanus along creeks and river beds. Michelle is closely monitoring all the Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens along 3.6km of Annie Creek and 10km of the Adcock River before it joins the mighty Fitzroy River.
To keep track of who's who, Michelle has marked each bird with a unique combination of bright coloured leg-bands. She's already banded about 180 birds in 50 groups. Every bird in 40 of these groups are watched weekly, the others monthly.
Did you know that Purple-crowned fairy-wren offspring often stay at home for a year or two to help their parents with the child rearing? In fact males tend to stay at home and help for longer than females, so families usually have more males than females around. These little birds have an amazing social life. Watching them provides incredibly interesting insights into their lives and loves - so tune in next month to find out more.
Our research will help unlock some of the secrets to their long term survival and enable us to better protect Purple-crowned Fairy-wrens for future generations.
Join us next month for the first update on this exciting new project.
Current tracking of the Purple-crowned fairy-wren
