Birds


 * Birds**


 * Dr. Simpson's Class - Steph & Claire**

1. What birds live at Woodleigh or migrate through the place? See the list of birds, under Terrestrial Macro Fauna. They are all the birds that have been seen but the birds that we have seen have been Magpies, Magpie Larks, Indian Mynas, Moorhens, White Faced Herons, Crested Pigeons, Eastern Rosellas, Noisy Miners and Little Wattle Birds. 2. Do they choose particular parts of the school? Why? Can you map this? Most birds that I have seen around the place do not stick to one place... I have seen noisy miner babies in one tree right outside homestead one. I have also seen an Eastern Rosella baby with its mum on the basketball ring by the science building. (sorry about the sideways picture!) The smaller birds also hang around in the denser vegitation which is out the front of the school but apart from that, the birds don't really stick to just one place. 3. Are any of them significant - pests, rare and endangered, covered by RAMSAR (yes, you'll need to find out what this is), used by indigenous Australians for food, medicine etc. Pigeons, Indian Mynas and Starlings are all pests. 4. Are they correlated with particular features of the school - buildings, open spaces, vegetation? The smaller birds love really dense vegitation. This is why we don't see many because the miners have pretty much chasen them away and we don't have much dense vegitation. The miners love open spaces and because we have reduced Woodleigh's trees' by about 30 percent they are everywhere. 5. How do you manage these - eg. Lapwings are a protected species. How do we manage the swooping hazard each year? We need to plant more trees around the oval and the South side of the school. The reason for this is because the smaller birds will have more room to live (because they love dense vegitation) and they are on the South side to protect us from the danger of fire. The reason there are so many ravens as well is because they love picking food from the ground and the bins. This can be helped by changing the bins to closed lids (the ones with the flaps) and have the front of them like a door so it is easy for the maintenance people to change the bins around. So pretty much, its like a post-box shape. The only way to help out with the Lapwings is to inform the students and staff that they are around and they will swoop if we bother them. There would most likely need to be punishment for harrassing them because the reason they swoop is because they are scared. If the students leave them alone they will leave the students alone as well.