A Guide To Urban Wildlife: 250 creatures you meet on your street

By Prof. Christopher B. Daniels

An authoritative but accessible guide to 250 animals, insects, and birds that inhabit the average Aussie suburb, written by ABC Radio broadcaster and urban ecology specialist, Professor Chris Daniels. This book will appeal to nature lovers everywhere.
Have you ever wondered what that peculiar insect sitting on a leaf in your backyard is called? What about the behaviour of those acrobatic possums that swing along the phone lines at dusk? And the beautiful lizard that lives under a stone near the compost bin? In every Australian suburban street there is a secret world; a world seen but not really understood, of animals that live alongside us. In Professor Christopher B. Daniels' A GUIDE tO URBAN WILDLIFE, he introduces you to 250 creatures that live on your street, in your backyard, in the air, at your local beach or even in your house, and takes you on a tour of their world, a world increasingly affected by its interaction with its human neighbours. In this fascinating book, you will learn how to recognise the animals you live among, and learn of their behaviours, communication, eating habits and peculiarities. Beautifully illustrated with full colour photography, this book is the essential guide for any nature lover, or anyone who wants to learn more about the world around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: May 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780730498742

Prof. Christopher B. Daniels

Chris Daniels is a professor and director of research at the School of Natural and Built Environments at University of South Australia, and a broadcaster on a weekly ABC Local Radio, South Australia spot. He writes fluently and vividly in his subject area.

Book preview

This book is dedicated to the memory of Geoffrey Clive Auricht,

scientist, adventurer, outdoorsman and friend,

in recognition of his work on, and enthusiasm for,

the life around us

Contents

Introduction

Birds

Birds of prey 1: day hunters — eagles, kites and falcons

Birds of prey 2: night hunters — owls, tawny frogmouths and owlet nightjars

Birds of the seashore 1: fish-hunters

Birds of the seashore 2: stilts and sandpipers

Birds of the seashore 3: terns and gulls

Birds of the seashore 4: ibis, spoonbills and storks

Birds of the seashore 5: lapwings, oystercatchers, plovers and dotterels

Birds you hear but never see: whipbirds, bellbirds, lyrebirds, bush stone-curlews and cuckoos

Crested pigeons and bronzewings

Crows, ravens, currawongs and butcherbirds

Ducks

Emus

Feral pigeons and other introduced doves

Finches

Geese and turkeys

Herons, egrets and cranes

Honeyeaters 1: garden honeyeaters

Honeyeaters 2: spinebills and New Holland honeyeaters

Insect-eaters: wrens, pardalotes, robins and silvereyes

Introduced garden birds: sparrows, blackbirds, skylarks, goldfinches and green finches

Kookaburras

Magpies

Magpie-larks

Miners and mynas

Parrots 1: medium- and large-sized urban parrots

Parrots 2: small parrots

Reed walkers: moorhens, swamphens, rails, coots and jacanas

Starlings

Swallows, martins and swifts

Swans

Wattlebirds and friarbirds

Willie wagtails

Fishes

Introduced fishes

Native fishes

Mammals

Bandicoots

Bats 1: microbats

Bats 2: flying foxes

Carnivorous mammals: dingoes, foxes and cats

Carnivorous marsupials

Koalas

Macropods 1: kangaroos

Macropods 2: wallabies, bettongs, potoroos and pademelons

Monotremes 1: echidnas

Monotremes 2: platypuses

Possums 1: brushtail possums

Possums 2: ringtail possums

Rabbits and hares

Rodents 1: mice

Rodents 2: rats

Wombats

Reptiles and amphibians

Big reptiles: crocodiles, sea turtles, pythons and monitor lizards

Bluetongue lizards

Brown snakes

Cane toads

Dragon lizards

Freshwater tortoises

Frogs

Garden skinks

Geckos

Legless and small-limbed lizards

Invertebrates

Ants 1: harmless ants

Ants 2: dangerous ants

Aquatic invertebrates

Bees

Beetles 1: the many, many beetles of Australia

Beetles 2: economically valuable beetles — dung beetles and ladybirds

Bugs 1: true bugs

Bugs 2: aphids

Bugs in your bed: bed bugs, lice and spiders

Butterflies 1: butterflies and skippers

Butterflies 2: monarch butterflies

Centipedes

Christmas drums and tree baubles: cicadas and Christmas beetles

Cockroaches

Crickets, grasshoppers and katydids

Earthworms

Earwigs, earth mites and nematodes

Ectoparasites: fleas and ticks

European wasps

Flies 1: five common families

Flies 2: mosquitoes

Garden crustaceans: slaters, pill bugs and lawn shrimp

Grubs, caterpillars and maggots

Household pests

Mantids, stick and leaf insects

Millipedes

Moths

Scorpions

Slugs, snails, platyhelminths and leeches

Spiders

Termites

Things with long wings: mayflies, damselflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, dragonflies, scorpion flies and lacewings

Tree attackers: lerps and hoppers

Wasps: hunters, plant-feeders and parasites

Yabbies

At the beach

Beach life 1: hanging on to rocks

Beach life 2: all washed up

Blue-ringed octopuses

Marine life

Marine mammals

Sharks

Backyards for wildlife

70 great websites for Australian urban animals

General

Birds

Fishes

Mammals

Reptiles and amphibians

Invertebrates

Marine and beach life

Wildlife in backyards

Photographic Insert

Glossary

Searchable Terms

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

Introduction

I live on a large sloping block of land in the foothills of Adelaide. At the bottom of the garden is a natural bushland park that forms part of the network of public land creating the Adelaide Hills Face Zone.

My eighteen-month-old golden retriever loves this block. In the evening she sits, like a woolly white lion, surveying her domain as it glows in the soft evening light. She sniffs the air, ears twitching constantly, and when she spots a bird or a lizard she barks joyously and rushes around in that enthusiastic, if somewhat confused, manner that retrievers seem to have perfected.

It is obvious from watching her that she, and I think this is true of all dogs, see the backyard, the park, even the streets of our city very differently to us. We see the city as a constructed place, filled with humans and their machines. We notice the cars and bikes. We check out the houses, flats and workplace buildings. We listen to human-manufactured noises, from televisions and radios to chain saws and lawn mowers. However, to our dogs, the city is alive with animals. They are tuned to the twittering of birds, the musky smell of bluetongue lizards and the fluttering of butterflies. My retriever waits patiently for a koala to stroll by, or for that family of magpies she hates to zoom in and raid her food bowl. She listens, rapt, to the cacophony of the rainbow lorikeets and warning chucks of the blackbird. On our street walks she invariably holds her nose down and her wagging tail up while trying to unearth any millipede, garden skink or earwig that she comes across. Frankly, I prefer the way my pup sees the city to the way I do. Hence this book.

If our dogs sense, observe and respond to the wildlife in our city, then so should we. Outside our doors (and often inside them) are many thousands of different types of animal. Some are native, some originate elsewhere in the country or come from overseas and have made our cities home. Some we love, some we hate, but most we do not notice. Many are reclusive and difficult to spot, others are in plain view, and others again demand our attention.

So how can we make sense of the bewildering array of species around us? Biologists can think about the animals in a number of ways. Most commonly, biologists will sort a collection of animals into related groups (such as mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes and invertebrates). This provides a list of what is out there and also tells us how animals are related to each other. It is also helpful in understanding the evolution and spread of animals because we can trace genealogies. This style is great for checklists, and works well if you already know a lot about the biology of the animals. However, it is not always helpful in demonstrating or explaining the drivers for the evolutionary radiation of life in cities, how particular niches are exploited, or the basic patterns and relationships that determine urban ecology. Nor does this approach tell you much about the natural history of the animals involved.

To understand the evolution of urban animal assemblages, we need to group the animals in different ways. One approach is to group animals by habitat. There are a great many habitats (sometimes broken down into small units called microhabitats) in or next to Australian cities. Remnant native vegetation, parks and gardens, front and backyards, the beach, the ocean, the soil, street trees and even the buildings themselves all provide habitats for animals. Animals can have an extraordinary number of different adaptations to one particular habitat. They may be camouflaged, mimic others, be poisonous, be nocturnal or diurnal, large or small. They may exhibit a spectacular array of specialisations that make them just a little bit different from all the other animals. This niche specialisation occurs to reduce competition and leads to the adaptive radiation of species.

It is important to realise that urban areas are largely human constructed and, as habitats, they change swiftly. Rapid structural changes lead to rapid changes in the distribution and abundance of the species that are present. For example, Australian urban areas typically contain parks that are largely grassed areas with large trees. This habitat is strikingly different to that present before European settlement. So, for example, some bird species will disappear from these parks, while other new species proliferate. New bird species may be released by us, accidentally or deliberately, or they may make their own way in. The numbers can increase rapidly because the new habitat provides the food resources or shelter that the species requires. Urban ecology therefore demonstrates evolution on ‘speed dial’.

To complicate things further, animals may have complex relationships with each other or share similar characteristics even if they are not related. Identifying the similarities and differences in unrelated species, and how animals interact with each other, tells us the important evolutionary characteristics necessary for survival. Understanding the natural history of urban animals allows us to identify the selection forces that drive evolution. These selection forces include those that lead to unrelated animals sharing similar lifestyle characteristics (such as biting in ticks and fleas), appearing at the same time of year (such as the summer emergence of cicadas and Christmas beetles) or sharing the same habitat and so using the same resources (such as soil invertebrates). Other animals come to resemble each other because of selection for other aspects of their life history. For example, grubs and caterpillars resemble each other because they are mostly sedentary eating machines. Sometimes selection may involve several of these characteristics all interacting at the same time, causing unrelated animals to come to very closely resemble each other in many ways. Hence, some animals that share lifestyle characteristics, seasonal activity patterns and habitat look similar and act in similar ways yet are not related (such as moorhens and jacanas). This process is termed convergent evolution.

Animals may also have complex symbiotic relationships with each other. A symbiotic relationship develops when species have a close, prolonged association. These relationships may, but do not necessarily, benefit all of the species involved (sometimes one species benefits while the other is not affected). Symbiotic relationships between animals can be:

Commensal, where one animal benefits from living and feeding in close association with another species without benefit or harm to the other species (e.g. magpies benefit from living in human-altered landscapes).

Mutual, where there is an association between organisms of two different species in which each member benefits (e.g. ants and some caterpillars).

Parasitic, where one member of the partnership is harmed by the other (e.g. fleas on cats).

These relationships tell us a great deal about the nature of urban habitats and the natural history of the animals that live among us.

In this book I have provided the elementary natural history of the animals we share our space with. I have grouped the animals by their well-known kin, but have taken licence to discuss animals based on the types of relationship they form as I have just described above. Some individual species are so important in the urban landscape that they warrant discussion on their own, while others are grouped together for a specific reason that highlights a driver in the evolution of animal relationships and survival in cities.

This book is a discussion about the wildlife that co-exists with us, not just a description of the types of animal close by (that is the job of a checklist). This focus is on introductory natural history and biology. For more information about any of the animals, visit the websites listed at the back of the book. These websites are among the most authoritative sites for Australian animal biology. Also, wherever possible, I  have included anecdotes or quirky facts that reveal the lives and lifestyles of animals, where they came from and why they survive in human-impacted communities.

Wherever we walk in an Australian town or city, we will encounter wildlife doing amazing things. So let’s explore the life in our cities!

Birds

BIRDS OF PREY 1

day hunters — eagles, kites and falcons

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Australian (or Nankeen) kestrel (Falco cenchroides)

Black kite (Milvus migrans)

Little falcon or Australian hobby (Falco longipennis)

Peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus)

Wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax)

White-bellied sea eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster)

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There are 24 species of diurnal (active during the day) raptors native to Australia. Members of this group of carnivorous and scavenging birds include some of Australia’s largest and fastest birds. They can soar on thermal currents searching for prey or carrion. Some species can be seen hovering above a field or paddock waiting for a mouse to make a fatal mistake. A few species of raptors nest on cliff faces and some, like the peregrine falcon, have adapted well to cities, feeding on pigeons and occasionally nesting on the window ledges of tall buildings. Peregrines, considered to be the fastest birds on earth, are found throughout Australia. Many airports keep or use trained peregrine falcons to scare away flocks of birds which otherwise could cause aircraft mishaps.

The largest of the raptors, the wedge-tailed eagle, is unique to Australia. It belongs to the same genus (Aquila) as the golden eagle of Europe and Asia. Wedge-tailed eagles usually weigh 3.5 to 6 kg, and have a wing span of up to 2  metres. Wedge-tailed eagles have been falsely accused of being sheep killers. However, studies by the CSIRO have revealed that less than 9 percent of their diet is made up of mutton (and over 99 percent of that mutton is from carrion). Although now protected, until the 1960s wedge-tailed eagles were ruthlessly hunted by pastoralists and farmers who considered them vermin. The corpses were then strung up on fences.

The white-bellied sea eagle is found along the coastline of mainland Australia and Tasmania, and inland on large rivers and lakes. White-bellied sea eagles are also found in India, south-eastern Asia, southern China and into New Guinea. They belong to the same genus (Haliaeetus) as the American bald eagle. The white-bellied sea eagle hunts for waterbirds, aquatic animals such as fish and sea snakes, and land animals up to the size of rabbits, and also eat carrion. This eagle’s talons operate via ligaments that can lock in place — once in its vice-like grip, prey have no chance of wiggling free.

Also called fork-tailed kites, allied kites, shite-hawks and firebirds, black kites are one of the more common northern raptors (vagrant birds have been sighted in south-west Western Australia, but it is unlikely that they breed there). Their natural food sources are insects, small animals and birds. They are known to soar for long periods of time, hawking insects as they fly. Black kites will gather in flocks, which is unusual behaviour for raptors. They are often seen at campgrounds, where they will work cooperatively to tip over rubbish bins to access food. In fact, black kites are sometimes called Kimberley seagulls because they gather in large numbers around abundant food sources.

The Australian (or Nankeen) kestrel is Australia’s smallest falcon and one of our most frequently sighted urban raptors. They have a short, notched bill and powerful feet. Adult males have grey heads and tails; adult females are larger than the males, with a brown head and reddish-brown tail. Kestrels will nest under the eaves of large buildings, such as churches and school gyms, especially if fields and paddocks are nearby to provide them with their mammal and reptile prey. These quick and agile birds can often be seen hovering over parks or fields, searching for prey. Once they have their prey in sight, they plunge head-first towards the ground, pulling out of their dive at the last moment to strike with their talons. They eat small mammals, insects and reptiles. Nankeen kestrels have large, specially adapted eyes which enable them to see ultraviolet light, allowing them to follow scent and urine trails to their prey.

Another common small raptor is the little falcon, which is more often called the Australian hobby after the European raptor it closely resembles. This falcon is found throughout Australia, and can easily be mistaken for a small peregrine falcon. Australian hobbies are bold, fierce, aggressive hunters living in open woodlands where their speed and agility enable them to pursue and catch their prey of small birds, which they hunt during the day. They also hunt at dusk, when they catch bats and insects, sometimes swooping down as the insects are attracted to street lamps.

BIRDS OF PREY 2

night hunters — owls, tawny frogmouths and owlet nightjars

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Southern boobook owl (Ninox novaeseelandiae)

Owlet-nightjar (Aegotheles cristatus)

Tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides)

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Owls are nocturnal birds with large round heads and massive, forward-facing eyes. Their plumage is soft and cryptically coloured. (Crypsis is any colouration that enables the animal to blend in with the background. Hence a cryptic animal that roosts in trees is often brown in colour to resemble the tree trunk.) Males and females are similar in appearance, although females are larger. A baby owl is called an owlet. Owls belong to the order Strigiformes, a group which is most closely related to nightjars (Caprimulgiformes). The order is divided into two families: typical owls (Strigidae) and barn owls (Tytonidae). Of the world’s 161  species of Strigidae, only four occur in Australia and all belong to the genus Ninox, a group of sixteen species known as hawk owls. Of the world’s fifteen species of Tytonidae, five occur in Australia. This group is known for their large heart-shaped facial mask and dark eyes and includes the well-known barn owl.

Owls are raptors, or birds of prey. They roost inconspicuously during the day, hunting mostly at dusk and dawn. A number of features make them formidable hunters. Their extraordinary eyesight allows them to locate prey in near-darkness. Some species can even hunt in the dark, using their acute directional hearing. In addition, owls fly quietly, allowing them to listen for, and surprise, prey. The sound of the air travelling over their wings is silenced by special edges to their feathers. Owls also have sharp, downward-facing bills for gripping and tearing prey. When hunting, they wait on a perch (such as a low branch or fence post) for prey to appear, then swoop down with outstretched wings and open talons.

The collective noun for a group of owls is a ‘parliament’. However, rather than gathering in groups, owls generally roost singly or in pairs. After eating, owls regurgitate waste pellets containing the bones, fur and feathers they have been unable to digest. It is sometimes possible to spot where owls live by the presence of pellets underneath their roosts.

Owls communicate vocally and through body language. Their vocal communication includes hoots (although not all owls hoot), whistles, screeches, screams, purrs, snorts, chitters and hisses. Hooting is commonly used to identify territory and is also used during courtship. Males usually have a lower-pitched hoot. Other noises owls can make include clicking with their tongues (as part of a threat display) and clapping their wings in flight (as part of a mating display). Many owl species bob their heads, giving them extra perspective on whatever they are viewing.

The most common and widespread urban owl is the southern boobook owl, of which there are twelve subspecies throughout Australia. This little hawk-owl is also known as mopoke, morepork, marbled owl and spotted owl (not to be mistaken for the North American spotted owl). The commonly heard call of the boobook is a double hoot with a high first note and a low second note. It can be repeated up to 20 times a minute.

The diminutive Australian owlet-nightjar is one of the most common and widespread of Australia’s nocturnal birds although it is rarely seen. It occurs in well-wooded areas throughout Australia and southern New Guinea. These owls roost in tree hollows during the day and feed on a variety of insects at night. They are territorial and form permanent pair bonds. The owlet-nightjar has two different plumage colourations: the common grey and the rufous morph.

Tawny frogmouths are found throughout Australia. Taxonomically, they are sometimes grouped with kingfishers and kookaburras, and sometimes with owls. Frogmouths are spectacularly well camouflaged and can be indistinguishable from tree stumps. In particular, when they are alarmed, frogmouths will ‘freeze’ with an outstretched neck, making them difficult to distinguish from the trees in which they roost. Their call is a low, resonant ‘oom-oom-oom-oom’. The common call of the southern boobook owl (described above) is often wrongly attributed to the frogmouth. Frogmouths catch prey on the ground and in the air, feeding mainly on insects, spiders, frogs, and sometimes small mammals.

BIRDS OF THE SEASHORE 1

fish-hunters

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Australian darter (Anhinga novaehollandiae)

Australian pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus)

Cormorants (Phalacrocorax sp.)

Little penguin (Eudyptula minor)

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When we walk along the beachfront we almost always see cormorants, pelicans or darters. In southern areas of Australia penguins are common, too. All of these birds are outstanding fish catchers, but they do their fishing in very different ways: diving, scooping or ‘flying’ under water to catch their next meal.

Cormorants dive from the water surface and catch fish by propelling themselves with their feet. They can see underwater because their eyes are protected by a nictitating membrane (a transparent third eyelid that can be drawn across the eye). Their diving is aided by partially wettable plumage that decreases their buoyancy. As a result, after diving they need to dry their feathers, which they do by spreading their wings. Cormorants will sit on trees, often choosing the tallest branches to roost on. When resting, preening or drying out they congregate in small groups, but otherwise they fly alone or in pairs. They have a powerful flight: keeping their neck outstretched, they fly rapidly along the surface of the water to then land on the water and shortly afterwards dive. They can also fly very high, always in a straight line. In Asia fishermen use cormorants for catching fish, and the cormorant species known as the guanay is the source of the fertiliser guano found in abundance along South America’s Pacific coast.

Australian darters are found around freshwater throughout Australia. Like the cormorants their feathers are not waterproof and you will usually see them sitting on a log or rock drying their outstretched wings. They are active underwater foragers and feed on anything from small crustaceans to large fish and even tortoises. Darters can sometimes be seen with only their head and neck coming out of the water, resembling a snake rising from the water; this unusual posture has given them an unusual nickname: the snake-bird. Darters breed year-round, but predominantly in spring and summer.

Australian pelicans are large black and white birds found Australia-wide in areas with water. Their wingspan can be over 2 metres. Their most readily recognised feature is their massive pouched bill, which is pale pink with a small hook on the end. Their feet have four webbed toes. Australian pelicans feed on fish, yabbies and crabs. They communicate with guttural pig-like grunts and sometimes work cooperatively, swimming together and driving fish into shallow areas where they scoop them up and swallow them whole. These birds make loose nests of sticks and plant stems, often on small islands. Females lay two to three large white eggs and parental care is shared; parents take turns to incubate the eggs (which take 32 to 35 days to hatch) and to feed chicks. Newly hatched chicks are featherless and dependent on their parents for food until they fledge at around fourteen weeks old.

Other fish-hunting birds we see are the penguins (order Sphenisciformes). In Australia the most encountered penguins are little penguins, the smallest of the world’s seventeen species of penguins. They are also known as fairy penguins because of their small size (only 40 to 45 cm high and weighing about 1 kg). They have a streamlined body, with densely distributed feathers and wings that are modified to be flippers, allowing them to ‘fly’ smoothly through the water. Their back and upper parts are blue (so they are also known as blue penguins) and their bellies are white. Their bill is grey-black, and the iris of its eye is pale grey to white. Little penguins occur in temperate seas (water temperatures of 13  to 20°C) along the southern coast of mainland Australia and around Tasmania. They feed in inshore waters, but can swim out as far as the continental shelf. Little penguins come ashore at sunset during the breeding season. They are usually colonial and their colonies are found mostly on islands. Watching the parade of penguins as they return to their burrows at dusk has become a popular summer event at some South Australian and Victorian colonies.

BIRDS OF THE SEASHORE 2

stilts and sandpipers

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Avocet (Recurvirostra novaehollandiae)

Banded stilt (Cladorhynchus leucocephalus)

Black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus)

Common sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos)

Curlew sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea)

Marsh sandpiper (Tringa stagnatilis)

Red-necked stint (Calidris ruficollis)

Sharp-tailed sandpiper (Calidris acuminata)

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Stilts (family Recurvirostridae, order Charadriiformes), including the banded stilts and the black-winged stilts, have a wide range and are found in Australia, Central and South America, Africa, southern and south-eastern Asia, and parts of North America and Eurasia. They are widespread on the Australian mainland. Banded stilts are found mainly in saline and hypersaline (very salty) waters of the inland and coast, while black-winged stilts prefer freshwater and saltwater marshes, mudflats and the shallow edges of lakes and rivers. Both banded and black-winged stilts and their relatives the avocets feed on crustaceans, molluscs, insects, vegetation, seeds and roots. They forage by picking, probing and scything (swinging their bills from side to side) on salt lakes, either by wading in shallow water or swimming, often some distance from the shore. Unlike the banded stilt, the black-winged stilt rarely swims for food, preferring instead to wade in shallow water and seize prey on or near the surface. Stilts are characterised by their very long slim legs and long straight black bills, though avocets have long upturned or ‘recurved’ bills. Stilts are diurnal (active and feeding by day), dependent on the availability of prey in ephemeral salt lakes (which appear only after flooding or rain). Stilts are dispersive, which means they can travel far from their birth location, and their movements are complex and often erratic in response to the availability of feeding and breeding habitat across their range. Populations may move to the coast or nearby when the arid inland is dry, returning inland to breed after rain or flooding.

Sandpipers, another group of birds in the same order as the stilts, include the sharp-tailed sandpiper, the marsh sandpiper and the common sandpiper among others. Sandpipers are small to medium-sized waders that inhabit the lakes, marshes, swamps and estuarine mudflats of Australia. Several species are summer migrants to Australia. The common sandpiper, for instance, breeds in Europe and Asia. Most of the western breeding populations winter in Africa and the eastern breeding populations winter in Australia and south Asia to Melanesia. When in Australasia the common sandpiper is found in New Guinea, New Zealand and on the coastal or inland wetlands, both saline and fresh, around the coastline of Australia. It is found mainly on muddy edges or rocky shores. During the breeding season in the Northern Hemisphere, it prefers freshwater lakes and shallow rivers.

The common sandpiper is one of about a dozen or more species that join enormous colonies (sometimes over 20,000  birds) of other sandpipers, particularly red-necked stints and curlew sandpipers, on the mudflats of southern and eastern Australia. Here they all feed on mud-dwelling invertebrates. The red-necked stint, curlew sandpiper and some other sandpipers, knots, curlews, greenshanks and other waders breed in north-eastern Siberia and northern and western Alaska. They follow the East Asian–Australasian Flyway to spend the southern summer months in Australia. (A flyway is the route taken by migrants traversing from the northern to the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa.) From an evolutionary point of view, this migration is advantageous because the birds get to exploit good feeding grounds all year round. Moving every six months also prevents predators from finding and exploiting them as prey items. However, the long journey is hazardous. In particular, it involves flying over many countries, in some of which the rest stops may not have been preserved. Migrating waders need to stop at lakes or marshes every few days to rest and refuel. If the lakes or swamps have been drained then the birds may well die. To solve this problem, treaties protecting the migrant flyways have been established to preserve the stopover points in all the countries involved and protect the end points of the migration.

BIRDS OF THE SEASHORE 3

terns and gulls

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Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea)

Crested tern (Sterna bergii)

Gull-billed tern (Sterna nilotica)

Kelp gull (Larus dominicanus)

Pacific gull (Larus pacificus)

Silver gull (Larus novaehollandiae)

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Terns and gulls belong to the family Laridae, in the same order as the stilts and sandpipers. Terns are widespread around the globe, and are a familiar sight in most coastal waters around Australia. The most famous species is the Arctic tern, which arrives in large numbers in Antarctica each summer to feed after a journey of some 20,000 km (12,000 miles) from its nesting grounds in the far north of the Northern Hemisphere. The crested tern is the second largest of the terns found in Australia and one of the most commonly seen species. It has a pale yellow bill, scruffy black crest, grey wings and back, and a white neck and underparts. Although it is often observed on its own, the crested tern also frequently forms mixed flocks with other species.

The gull-billed tern is entirely white, except for a black crown from bill to nape, a grey back and upper wings, and darker flight feathers. The iris is dark brown, bill and legs black. The common name relates to the thicker, shorter bill of this tern, which is closer in shape to that of the silver gull. Gull-billed terns are found in freshwater swamps, brackish and salt lakes, beaches and estuarine mudflats, floodwaters, sewage farms, irrigated croplands and grasslands. Although essentially an inland species, outside the breeding season it shows a distinct preference for saltmarshes and lagoons near the coast; it is common and widespread in south-eastern Australia, and only a vagrant in Tasmania. Its nests are shallow depressions scraped in sand or mud, lined with some vegetation. Both sexes incubate the eggs.

Some gulls found in Australia are the Pacific gull, the kelp gull and the most common of them all, the silver gull. The Pacific gull is a very large native gull (it grows to 66 cm in length) distributed along the southern coast from Carnarvon in Western Australia to Sydney and occasionally turning up along the south-eastern coastline. It is much larger than the ubiquitous silver gull, but is not as common. Pacific gulls have a powerful red-tipped yellow bill; they can be distinguished from kelp gulls by the black band on their tails. Young birds are brown and do not attain the black and white plumage of adults till they are four years old. Pacific gulls are usually seen alone or in pairs, perched on lights or jetty pylons along the shoreline. They may also patrol high above the edge of the water, sometimes climbing high on the breeze to drop a shellfish, limpet, mussel or sea urchin onto rocks to break it open. Pacific gulls appear to be under pressure from the invasive kelp gull.

The kelp gull is a large black-backed gull with a white tail and a large yellow bill with a red spot on the lower tip. It is the second largest gull in Australia. The kelp gull is gregarious, prefering to roost, feed and breed in flocks. The kelp gull first established itself in Australia in the 1940s, with the first breeding recorded on Moon Island near Lake Macquarie in New South Wales in 1958. Their numbers have increased rapidly since the 1960s and they are now common along parts of the southeast and south-west coasts, and especially in Tasmania. The kelp gull is widespread in New Zealand, and is found on most sub-Antarctic islands, as well as on islands south of the Antarctic Convergence and the Antarctic Peninsula, South America and Africa. The kelp gull forages on land or in water. It feeds mainly on fish and crustaceans, but will scavenge anything when an opportunity arises. The kelp gull nests in loose colonies or scattered single pairs on offshore islands, where breeding birds maintain large territories against other gulls. Newly fledged kelp gulls are brown with paler mottling on the hind neck and breast and they have a black bill. Immature kelp gulls have mottled brown wings and back with a whitish body and a completely yellow bill. Like albatrosses, kelp gulls occasionally become entangled in fishing lines, and are particularly susceptible to long-line fishing. In New Zealand, the kelp gull was formerly an important food source for the Maori people.

The silver gull has a white head, tail and underparts, with a light grey back and black-tipped wings. In adult birds the bill, legs and eye-ring are bright orange-red. The silver gull’s colouration and its relatively small size easily distinguish it from the other two resident gulls. The silver gull is common throughout Australia