04 Superb Fairywrens
About this episode
Those little blue birds in the park have far more going on than they let on. Dr Holly Kirk shares Superb Fairywren research, urban ecology and her love of Royal Park in Melbourne.
Episode illustration: Non-breeding male Superb Fairywren
Dr Holly Kirk is an urban ecologist working in the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Group at RMIT University. Holly’s research investigates how animals move around their environment and how we can use this knowledge to improve things for both people and nature in cities. She works on several projects that aim to make sure nature is being remembered when we design urban places. Holly loves spending time in nature, and is never happier than when helping other people find things to be excited about in their local parks, gardens or yards.
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Kirsty: This episode was recorded on the countries of the Bunurong Boonwurrung people and the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation. I would like to pay my respect to Elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people listening to this podcast.
Kirsty: Welcome to Weekend Birder, the podcast that shares birdwatching stories and advice. I'm your host, Kirsty Costa. And in this episode, fellow bird nerds, you are going to meet Dr. Holly Kirk. Holly is an urban ecologist working in the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science group at RMIT University. Her research investigates how animals move around their environment and how we can use this knowledge to improve things for both people and nature in cities. Here is how Holly got into birdwatching.
Holly: I've always been into nature. Very lucky. My parents let me spend lots of time outside. When I was younger, I was actually much more into invertebrates, so things like bees and butterflies and spiders and particularly things on the seashore. But even then, I would say some of my clearest memories of nature as a young person really involved birds. Seeing Golden Eagles for the first time when we were up in Scotland on a family holiday and also flocks of waders in the winter. The UK is an island so it's quite quick to get to the coast and some amazing birds turn up there. I suppose it wasn't really until I actually started work on my PhD that my bird nerdery really took flight. Pun not intended (apologies for that). Before I started my PhD, I went to study zoology at university and I wanted to work in conservation. I knew that really clearly, but I didn't realise that research existed as a sort of thing that you could do. And I went and started my degree and met people doing PhDs and worked out what all those professors were doing when they weren't teaching and realised that I could actually keep learning and studying nature as part of my job and so that's why I then chose to do a PhD.
Holly: My PhD was on sea birds and I was trying during my PhD to understand the migratory behaviour of shearwaters, Manx Shearwaters in particular. Shearwaters are like mini albatrosses. They spend huge amounts of their time out at sea and I was really lucky because I got to go and live on tiny offshore islands and study these birds during their breeding season. And I guess part of that, I was very lucky to be able to do that, was lots and lots of fieldwork as part of my PhD. But it really helped me develop the skills I use now, which is trying to understand how lots of animals move around their environments. And I moved away from seabirds and into the urban space. I was very excited to be able to do that because I believe quite passionately that urban birds and lots of urban wildlife are the best way that people can connect with everyday nature. And I think if more people are able to love their local birds, then they might be willing to work together to make more space for nature in all parts of their lives, whether that's in their backyard or by taking the time to look after nature in our national parks as well.
Kirsty: Holly loves helping people get excited about what animals and plants they can find in their local parks, gardens or backyards. So she's the perfect person to teach us more about a common urban bird known as the Superb Fairywren. This wren is one of my personal favourite birds, which is why I actually chose it to feature in this podcast logo. And I'm not alone. It was actually crowned the 2021 Australian Bird of the Year by Guardian Australia and BirdLife Australia after 14,000 votes were cast for it by the general public.
Holly: I like to think about them a little bit as if they are a ping pong ball on the end of a stick because they've got these tiny, very spherical bodies, but these really long tails. They're very small, about ten grams, so if you had one in your hand it would feel really light. And their tail is actually longer than their body. In the winter, males and females look similar. They're both a lovely soft brown colour, but the males actually have this sort of blue wash on their tails, almost like someone's taken a paintbrush and dipped it in some watercolour, but it's really, really pale. So they've just washed that over the tails. And the males often have quite dark areas around their eyes and their beak. But the females, you can tell them apart in the winter because they have a beautiful orange.
Holly: Now, in the summer, the males get all fancy so they get these amazing blue feathers all over their heads and the Super Fairywrens. They have these blue heads but they also have these beautiful black velvety patches. There's a band that runs around the back of the neck, and there's also a patch that runs underneath their chin as well. Now the blue feathers are quite special. It's really hard to make blue colours in nature so the blue feathers are actually what we call a structural colour. They're a really intense blue because it's actually the shape of the barbs on the feather that captures the light and bounces it back to our eyes, creating the blue colour.
Holly: Lots of animals have differences between males and females. We call this sexual dimorphism. We think the main reason that this happens, particularly in lots of birds, is that the males can prove that they're really desirable and they're going to be really good fathers. Making blue feathers can take quite a lot of energy and then avoiding being seen when you're bright blue and the bush that you're hiding in is a sort of muted green colour, avoiding being seen and then eaten is hard work. So being blue shows the female birds that male is really healthy and will make a really good mate.
Kirsty: Fun fact: there is more than one type of fairywren living in Australia.
Holly: There are ten species of fairywrens in Australia. Lots of them have some blue plumage with some species almost completely blue. Well the males that is, remember the males and females look different. So they're Splendid Fairywren and the White-winged Fairywren both have very blue males, but there are actually two blue exceptions. The Red-backed Fairywren has a red back and black wings, and the Purple-crowned Fairywren has a beautiful purple crown. Both of those fairy remains are found further in the northern parts of Australia.
Holly: Superb Fairywrens actually live mostly in the southern eastern corner of Australia. That is, from the bottom of eastern Queensland through eastern New South Wales and then the whole of Victoria and Tasmania, and then a little corner of South Australia. They love to live in really dense shrubby understory habitat, so they're not high up in trees, they're low down. Because they forage on the ground, they often hop in and out of dense vegetation and they eat things like lots of invertebrates. Invertebrates are things like spiders, beetles, flies, butterflies, wood lice. And we often see Superb Fairywrens in small groups as they like to hang out together. Sometimes they form bigger groups in the winter, but during the summer and in the spring, they form these social groups and that's usually a male and a female bird and some of their offspring, and they hang around all together. So you often see them pinging in and out of dense shrubbery and you hear them usually before you see them, they have a very distinctive call.
Kirsty: The land that is now known as Royal Park is a significant area for the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Located just to the north of Melbourne CBD, its large open spaces include grasslands, open woodlands and wetlands. Royal Park holds a special place in my heart as I get to walk through it regularly on my way to and from work.
Holly: Royal Park is a little stepping stone, or an island paradise, in the City of Melbourne. It's this great place for birds. It's got heaps of wonderful resources, native habitat, water, and it's home to around 170 species, on and off. Not all of them are there all the time, and we think that it acts as this important stepping stone across Melbourne, especially between the two corridors of the Moonee Ponds Creek and the Merri Creek. We think in an urban space, so like Melbourne that creek lines act as important corridors, but we're also trying to find out how this might work and we know that there's a population of Superb Fairywrens in Royal Park, so we're hoping that by providing more small patches of habitat around Royal Park and within Royal Park, that that might make it easier for the birds, the small woodland birds, like Fairywrens, to cross the gaps between those habitat patches and between those corridors.
Kirsty: Holly says that there is still a lot we don't know about Superb Fairywrens, and that's why the Superb City Wrens project was created.
Holly: The Superb City Wrens project is aiming to understand whether strategic revegetation, now that's vegetation that the City of Melbourne are putting in especially to benefit small woodland birds like Superb Fairywrens. So the project is all about trying to understand whether that vegetation and adding it into the landscape around Royal Park in Melbourne will help to restore the Superb Fairywren population to places across the city. Superb Fairywrens and other small woodland birds are under some of the most pressure from habitat loss in urban environments and other threats such as predation by domestic cats. And we're trying to make it easier for these species to move around their environment safely. We also don't know that much about how Fairywrens move across the landscape, especially in urban spaces. So the project is also trying to help us understand that. So what type of habitat is best? What positions are best? Where are key places where we need to target those actions? So I'm from RMIT University and I'm working with other researchers at the University of Melbourne and we're also working with BirdLife Australia who are providing some amazing banding expertise and the City of Melbourne themselves who are actually doing that on ground revegetation work.
Kirsty: Throughout this podcast you will hear scientists talking about banding birds and identifying birds by the bands that they wear. As a beginner birdwatcher, I'm curious to know more about this practice. And Holly is here to tell us more.
Holly: Researchers put bands on birds for lots of reasons, but the main underlying reason is so that we can identify who the bird is if we see it again. Unlike people, individual birds look very similar to each other. Well, at least they do when we look at them as other as humans. The bands have a unique number code on them so if we see a bird again, we can look at where it was originally caught. Our Superb Fairywrens carry a unique combination of three different coloured, very tiny bands and this allows us to recognise individual birds but from a distance so we don't actually have to capture the bird again. Banding doesn't hurt the birds. It's a little bit like wearing a watch, a Super Fairywren. Bands are so tiny and light, each one is lighter than a dewdrop. We only let very specially trained people catch and band the birds and the birds are only handled for a very short time. We also have to get a special permit, an ethics permit, to do this work. And bird banding has been used by scientists all across the world now for many decades. We know it's the safest way to mark birds without hurting them, particularly these very small birds. And studies show that done properly, it doesn't affect their breeding behaviour or their survival.
Kirsty: As you develop your birdwatching and binocular skills, you might like to get involved in citizen science projects like the City Wrens project, and it's easier than you might think.
Holly: Anyone visiting Royal Park, or the area around Royal Park (Parkville and some of the suburbs near there), anyone can be involved in the Superb City Wrens project. We would love to invite you to become a wren watcher. Now we really need people to keep an eye out for our Superb Fairywrens that have those colour bands on them. We have over 50 birds with colour bands now and it's about the time that they should be moving around out and about more, leaving the area where they've been banded. We really need volunteers to do short 15 minute surveys at the locations that we've noted, In and around Royal Park. And during those surveys you can note down whatever bird species you see. But most importantly, we're looking for those Fairywrens. The surveys are really easy and you don't need special equipment, just a map of the locations, a notebook and perhaps some binoculars and definitely some enthusiasm. All the instructions are on our webpage.
Kirsty: Check out the notes of this episode for a link to the Superb City Wrens project and find out more. The goal of citizen science projects like this one is to gather lots of data, and Holly says this data is like gold to scientists.
Holly: The data that's collected by citizen scientists will be going into a big spreadsheet. We'll be looking at the locations, particularly of the Superb Fairywrens. The locations where the birds have been seen, particularly, again, outside of the areas where they were banded. It will tell us a lot of information about how far they've moved, what habitat they were then seen in afterwards. Was it in some of the new vegetation? Was it in some of the old vegetation? Without putting a tracking device on these birds, we can't really understand how far they're capable of moving or what paths they are going to take through the landscape. So people sighting our Superb Fairywrens, anywhere outside the particular spot where they've been banded, is going to be really valuable information for us. We will then be able to use it to build some models of how far the birds can move and compare it to some of our existing understanding of how the landscape is connected for these species.
Kirsty: Holly has been birding for many years and has some pearls of wisdom to share with us.
Holly: It's hard to choose one piece of advice to give to beginner birdwatchers. I sometimes feel like I'm a beginner birdwatchers, but still there are three things that I think are really important. The first is to take your time and use all your senses. Get good at spotting the little thing that moves out of the corner of your eye. And using your ears, particularly to listen for different calls and all of the different clues that we might get about a bird or spotting a bird. Be patient with yourself - getting good at ID-ing birds takes time and practise, but practise means you get to spend more time looking at birds. It's a win-win really. And I would say lastly, get to know your locals. This is great for helping when something really unusual turns up. But knowing your local birds brings so much joy because that's when you really start to see individual behaviours, understand seasonal patterns and get to know the characteristics of your locals. And that's one of my favourite things to do, really immerse yourself in the local birds.
Kirsty: I really admire Dr. Holly Kirk's passion and commitment to caring for urban birds. Around the world, people and organizations are working together to collect scientific data and ensure that birds and their habitats are protected. Visit weekendbirder.com to read more about Holly and fairy wrens. You can also join us on your favourite social media platform to connect with our guests and follow some fun birding adventures.
