Billiatt Conservation Park post January 2014 fires Philip N Maher On 14 August 2014, Steve Seymour and I visited Billiatt Conservation Park to see what bird species had survived the horrendous fires of the previous summer. We spent eight hours surveying the Park. Some historical notes In the early 1990s, a good deal of the northern part of the conservation park had been burnt. This area of regrowth contained a large population of striated grasswrens with the greatest density in the northeast corner, with pairs about 200 metres apart. This represents the highest concentration of striated grasswrens I’ve ever encountered, anywhere. Over the next fifteen or so years, as the regrowth matured and the conservation park became more heathy, the population of striated grasswrens dwindled. It’s likely also that their numbers were adversely affected by the great drought (2001 – 2010). It’s now about six years since I’ve seen striated grasswrens in Billiatt; they may be there but I have not recorded them. It’s possible that the species still exists in the northeast corner, as there are some areas there that survived the January 2014 fire. This is also the area where we recorded mallee whipbird in 1996-1997 in regrowth broombush. There was also a large population of Mitchell’s hopping mouse in the area at that time. I’ve not birded the northeast corner for many years and I don’t know if the whipbird survives in the park. Over the past eighteen years, our main target in Billiatt CP has been red-lored whistler. There was a reasonable population in the park although they became scarce during the drought and seemed to have disappeared from our reliable location on the west side of the main road. Fortunately, a pair was located on the east side of the road and we have been recording this pair, or other pairs, there for the last eight or so years. I would be interested to know when mallee emuwren was last recorded in Billiatt Conservation Park, having never recorded the species in the park. Any population present prior to January 2014 is unlikely to have survived the fires. Current survey
The other patch that survived was a strip along the road that SA Parks burnt off about five years ago; so controlled burning definitely had a positive effect in that area. All the southern section of the Billiatt is largely burnt east and west of the road for as far as the eye can see. We saw very little habitat left for red-lored whistlers as the understorey is too tall in most of the remaining unburned patches we birded. However, we did locate one sub-adult male in a smallish area that looked vaguely suitable, not far from where we’d been seeing them in recent years.
The following species were recorded in and around the small unburned patches on the east side of the main road, towards the northern boundary of the park. The main patch we birded was about two kilometres long and varied in width from 100 — 200 metres wide. Emu: fresh scats and tracks Notes Striated grasswren: as previously noted Spotted pardalote: probably nomadic to some degree, presumably it will move back. Striated pardalote: as for spotted Yellow thornbill: hanging on somewhere there? Chestnut quailthrush: presumably still present; can be hard to locate at times Varied sittella: very little habitat left for this species, presumably can recolonise Gilbert’s whistler: Never common in Billiatt; maybe hanging on somewhere The birding wasn’t too bad in the few unburned patches as there had been some rain in the area over the prior months. It’s worth noting however, that the birds were at about the same density as to be expected in any other year without catastrophic fire, that is, there were no extra birds in the unburned patches that had moved in from the thousands of hectares of surrounding burned mallee. All those birds, presumably, had either perished in the fire, staved to death afterwards, or had moved elsewhere. Due to the rains since the fire most of the mallee has already shot so the area has started to recover; however, it will take several years of good rainfall before we see many species recolonising Billiatt*. It will be fascinating to see if striated grasswren return to anything like their former numbers in the regrowth — if they still exist in Billiatt. * Billiatt Conservation Park received good rain in January 2015. |
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Burnt mallee with unburnt patch of mallee in background, Billiatt CP, 14 August 2014 Photo Philip Maher
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