Western Banders Association

Banders’ Delight – By Lee Fontanini

I live in paradise, 10kms south-west of Manjimup on 7 acres of land; Archies Oven Brook flows through.  Here, my grandfather arrived 101 years ago and started clearing several hundred acres of virgin karri bush for farming.  Eighteen months ago, I fenced off each side of the brook and started a revegetation program using mostly local native plants.  My aim is to help protect/enhance the riparian zone and water quality, protect an indigenous site, set an example for others to hopefully follow and provide habitat for wildlife, not only birds but also Ring-tailed Possum and Bandicoots which are now being sighted nearby.

To document the anticipated increase of birds, I have a banding project for the area.  Jenny White from Perth was visiting and there was no better time to start than January 1^st, 2010.

 We used 1x30, 2x40 and 1x60 nets as we had no idea how many birds we would catch.  Apart from the list below, we also caught but did not band a Magpie, Magpie Lark (it had a deformed leg from a possible old injury) and three Western Rosellas.  

With 15 species banded, we felt very pleased with ourselves; what a great start.  I plan to band at this site at least four times a year.

Middlesex Swallows

Dick and Molly Brown from the Middlesex Field Study Centre had banded Welcome Swallow chicks in the nest for years. I took up their project and started banding chicks in 2001 visiting the same sites as the Browns did,  although over the years many no longer exist; dead karri trees in dams fallen over, buildings demolished etc. But some sites remain, especially bridges and culverts and it is here that I have banded most of the 276 chicks.  To my delight, a pair of Welcome Swallows took up a nest site on my verandah and one of the birds was banded. Having caught the bird, I found that I had banded it two years ago as a chick in Middlesex. As the Swallow flies, that is a distance of about 10kms.