Wildlife Movement and Habitat Needs in Manningham

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by Dr Graeme S. Lorimer, Scott Baker and David Lockwood Manningham City Council

28 June, 2009

Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 1. INTRODUCTION 4 2. PROJECT OUTLINE 7 3. FIELDWORK 7 4. ANALYSIS OF FIELDWORK DATA 10

4.1 Measuring the Consistency of Travel Directions 10 4.2 The Importance of Streams 12

4.2.1 Implications for Council 15 4.3 Relative Importance of Creeks and Habitat Quality 15 4.4 Corridor Bottlenecks 16

4.4.1 Implications for Council 19 5. WILDLIFE MOVEMENT THROUGH TREED RESIDENTIAL AREAS 19

5.1.1 Implications for Council 20 6. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF LINEAR REVEGETATION 21 7. STRATEGIC IMPROVEMENT OF CORRIDORS 21 8. FURTHER WORK 22 9. CONCLUSION 22 REFERENCES 23 APPENDIX – SUMMARY OF FAUNA OBSERVATIONS 25

Executive Summary Recommendation A75 of Manningham City Council’s Green Wedge Strategy was to conduct a study into the location and effectiveness of existing habitat corridors and the opportunities for improving mobility of wildlife across the Manningham landscape. We conducted this study in 2006-8 and expanded it to include an investigation of the mobility of fauna in areas other than corridors. This document reports the outcomes of the project and its relevance to Council.

A literature survey found that most quantitative demonstrations of the usage of corridors by wildlife anywhere in the world have involved costly and demanding methods beyond Council’s resources, such as genetic analyses and radio tracking. New methods of fieldwork were therefore developed for our project, taking advantage of what has been learned by previous studies of wildlife movements.

An extensive program of fieldwork was conducted during 2006-7. The main findings from a literature survey and the fieldwork are that:

Wildlife Movement and Habitat Needs in Manningham

Version 1.0, 28 June 2009

• Habitat fragmentation is a major threat to the survival of indigenous fauna and flora in Manningham.

• Manningham’s streams, gullies and valleys are functioning as effective corridors for a range of native birds, including many of the more significant species. This is true even along Brushy Creek and Ruffey Creek, with their sparse and highly fragmented scatterings of native vegetation. Platypus and fish also move along some of the streams. Many bird species prefer to move along valley floors even when there is superficially superior habitat on the adjacent slopes.

• A bottleneck on the Mullum Mullum Ck corridor was shown to cause many birds to converge into the neck rather than traverse an untreed expanse. Widening such bottlenecks by revegetation is expected to be beneficial.

• Because of the fragmented patchwork of native vegetation in Manningham, a substantial proportion of wildlife movements occur across residential areas with only scattered trees. These movements, and hence the landscape of these residential areas, are important to the maintenance of wildlife in Manningham. Conversely, the movements are important to residents who enjoy the presence of native birds and mammals such as koalas and kangaroos in their neighbourhood.

• Along corridors and within treed residential areas, maintenance of native tree cover (and particularly the locally indigenous species) is the most important requirement for facilitating wildlife movements. These movements are important for the survival of both the wildlife and many indigenous plants that rely on wildlife for pollination, seed dispersal or pest control.

• Small insect-eating birds do not persist in the absence of a shrub layer that provides them with cover from predators. The species of shrubs are also important. Exotic shrubs and certain Australian native shrubs with prolific nectar production can exacerbate an ecological imbalance between bird species, leading to displacement of small insect-eating birds by aggressive wattlebirds or miners. Loss of small insect-eating birds is associated with outbreaks of insect pests and consequent tree dieback, a major problem in Manningham.

• The main ways in which Manningham City Council can support the movement of wildlife are:

o Conducting revegetation and habitat restoration to broaden and connect stream corridor vegetation (particularly on the key wildlife corridors listed in Section 7). However, narrow linear plantings are not recommended;

o Fostering the same sort of revegetation by private landowners and Melbourne Water;

o Using the permit approval process and the Environmental Significance Overlay in the Manningham Planning Scheme to limit habitat fragmentation by land development and vegetation removal, with particular emphasis on stream corridors and gullies;

o Using the Manningham Planning Scheme to protect indigenous plants in treed residential areas of Manningham (as well as, to a lesser extent, protecting non-invasive trees from other parts of Australia);

o Managing its own bushland reserves in ways that minimise fragmentation, e.g. when choosing alignments for firebreaks or deciding priority areas for habitat restoration;

o Favouring locally indigenous plant species in landscaping projects, when such species meet other landscaping requirements;



o Encouraging gardeners to provide habitat plants for wildlife, perhaps using the model of the ‘Gardens for Wildlife’ program that is run by Knox City Council and the Knox Environment Society.



1. Introduction Nature and the natural environment are unsurpassed among the things that residents value about living in Manningham, according to a 2005 focus group survey*. People appreciate Manningham’s greenery – particularly its native vegetation – complete with the birds and other wildlife that comes with it. Council therefore has a responsibility of stewardship of nature, in addition to its statutory responsibilities (e.g. under the Victoria Planning Provisions and the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994).

The most important nature conservation issues on which Council has a direct influence can be characterised as follows:

• Loss of habitat: Council monitoring shows that the extent of native vegetation is steadily declining, particularly as a result of land development that is controlled by Council under the Manningham Planning Scheme;

• Deterioration of ecological condition of habitat: The ecological condition of habitat is showing a tendency to decline due to factors such as drought, weeds, eucalypt dieback and grazing. However, this tendency is being reversed in some areas by bushland management work and curtailment of damaging practices;

• Decline of species: Many species of indigenous flora and fauna are at great risk of becoming locally extinct from the municipality. As species disappear from an area, the ecosystem becomes less biodiverse and the system can lose resilience against pressures such as drought and climate change, leading to a chain reaction of further local extinctions.

Council’s Economic and Environmental Planning unit is addressing the first two of these points through several programs, including through Planning Scheme Amendment C54 (‘Sites of Biological Significance’), the Biodiversity Incentives Program and the Bushland Management Action Plan. Another program in progress is identifying which species are at risk of local extinction, to what degree and for what reasons. Council’s bushland management team are active in on-ground work to improve the ecological condition of habitat on Council land.

The main reason why Manningham is progressively losing indigenous fauna species is that the areas of suitable habitat for the affected species are progressively fragmented into smaller and more isolated patches until they are too small and distant to support the species. Small, isolated populations of a fauna species:

• Can be easily wiped out by chance events such as fire or removal of a critical nesting hollow;

• May not be able to move between seasonal feeding grounds or breeding grounds;

• Are prone to breeding problems such as inbreeding, difficulty finding suitable mates, inadequate food resources for dependent young and poor opportunities for dispersal of young from their parental territories;

• Are less likely to be replaced by immigration when a population dies out.

The quality of the habitat in small fragments is also compromised by ‘edge effects’, in which external pressures such as weed invasion and cat predation penetrate into the whole area, unlike larger areas that often contain a core of better habitat.

* ‘Community Values: A Market Research Report into the Values of Manningham’s Residents’. Marketing Unit,

Manningham City Council.



Indigenous flora species are subject to the same sorts of effects of fragmentation and isolation as fauna. As the habitat for a plant species becomes more fragmented, the fragments eventually become so far apart that pollen and seeds are no longer dispersed between them. Breeding, regeneration and re-colonisation can then fail. The problem is compounded because fragmentation causes not only physical separation of plant populations but also a decline in fauna (particularly birds and insects) that perform pollination and dispersal.

Fragmentation of habitat therefore causes loss of flora species, loss of fauna species and deterioration of the ecological condition of habitat. It is recognised globally as one of the main causes of loss of biodiversity.

This problem is particularly acute and active in Manningham. Figure 1 depicts the distribution of native vegetation within the municipality, based on the work of Foreman (2004). Note the patchiness and fragmentation of bushland (both intact and modified) and that the patches are typically separated from each other by hundreds or thousands of metres with little if any understorey and mostly only scattered trees. In the western half of the municipality, bushland is restricted to tiny patches within an urban landscape.

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Figure 1. Map of broad categories of vegetation cover in Manningham.

Because of the prevalence of habitat fragmentation in Manningham and the associated problems discussed above, it is ecologically important for Manningham City Council to help minimise fragmentation. Council can do this through:

• The Manningham Planning Scheme, through the permit approval process and the use of the Environmental Significance Overlay where fragmentation by land development is in prospect;

• Revegetation and habitat restoration to fill gaps between areas of habitat (particularly along streams);



• Fostering the same sort of work by private landowners and Melbourne Water; and

• Managing its own bushland reserves in ways that minimise fragmentation, e.g. when choosing alignments for firebreaks or deciding on priority areas for habitat restoration work.

The arrangement of the patches of bushland in Figure 1 suggests possible routes that wildlife may take through the landscape to minimise their traversal through poor habitat. The streams also represent possible routes for nomadic or migratory movement of fish, Platypus, waterbirds and other fauna. As the Manningham Green Wedge Strategy states (page 51),

‘A number of strategic plans and regional environmental studies identify the Yarra River, the Mullum Mullum Creek and the Park Orchards Ridge (linking the Mullum Mullum Creek with Fourth Hill on Andersons Creek) as the primary corridors of potential fauna movement at a regional scale. This is based on a number of assumptions about how fauna move, the most important of which are the spatial patterning of remnant habitat and proximity to water.’

These potential wildlife corridors were only surmised rather than demonstrated, and there has been only broad, generalised guidance about features of the landscape that might facilitate movement of wildlife, seeds and pollen across the landscape. Consequently, the Manningham Green Wedge Strategy recommended (in action A75) to:

‘Identify the:

• Functional strategic corridors present within Manningham

• Species for which these corridors are important

• Specific management actions required to maintain these corridors

• Potential to create new strategic links

• Extent to which revegetated linear parks actually function as wildlife corridors and review management accordingly’.

The present report has fulfilled these objectives. It is hoped that the information will provide useful guidance for Council’s:

• Priorities and budgeting for investment on natural habitat, such as bushland management, revegetation projects and land purchases;

• Advice and support to private landowners about critical corridor gaps and the ecological benefits that could be achieved if key landowners were to conduct appropriate planting or other actions;

• Assessment of planning permit applications, e.g. by steering development proposals toward designs that avoid fragmentation of habitat corridors, and favouring landscape plans that make good use of opportunities to improve habitat connectivity;

• Selection of sites to be protected and rehabilitated as ‘offsets’ for vegetation removal that is subject to planning permits;

• Amendments to the Planning Scheme, such as the current Amendment C54 which (in part) proposes ESOs for protection of indigenous flora, fauna and habitat.



The main outcome that this project has worked toward has been improvement of the capacity of native fauna, pollen, seeds and spores to move about the landscape. The benefits from this would be:

• Reducing the existing prevalence of inbreeding and poor reproduction of indigenous flora and fauna by facilitating genetic interchange between habitat patches, thereby reducing local extinctions and ecological degradation;

• Meeting the habitat needs of native fauna species that would otherwise struggle or not be present, e.g. allowing them to move between their summer and winter habitat areas, or expanding the area of habitat available to an animal by facilitating movement between multiple patches of habitat;

• Maximising the appearance of native birds, butterflies and other popular fauna in gardens and parks where they can be enjoyed by people, and where they can provide services such as pollination and control of insect pests.

2. Project Outline This project involved the following tasks:

• A literature survey of relevant research, theories, methods and principles about habitat fragmentation, wildlife movements and corridors;

• An investigation of unpublished fauna and habitat studies that have been conducted in Manningham, including Melbourne Water’s studies of aquatic fauna and local naturalists’ observations of birds and mammals (particularly from Carol Clarke, Hazel Veevers and Murray Bourchier);

• Inquiries of local naturalists about their knowledge of wildlife movements within Manningham, e.g. daily and seasonal movements of kangaroos and koalas;

• Analysis of aerial photography, topography and vegetation mapping of Manningham and surrounding habitat to find potential habitat corridors and gaps;

• Designing and conducting a field experiment to investigate the nature of movements of fauna around Manningham and the factors that influence those movements;

• Analysis of the results from the field experiment and the literature survey, including consideration of different categories of fauna such as arboreal mammals and migratory birds.

3. Fieldwork The ways in which wildlife corridors and faunal movements can be detected include:

• Radio tracking of individuals;

• ‘Trap-mark-recapture’ experiments;

• Genetic analysis of the familial relationships between individuals captured at different locations;



• Detecting linear patterns in distribution maps of wildlife observations (taking care to account for bias in observer locations);

• Watching and analysing the trajectories of individual animals.

The present project avoided trapping or handling fauna and instead opted for the last item in the list above. The value of this approach was highlighted by Beier and Noss (1998), who concluded that,

‘observations of movements by naturally dispersing animals in fragmented landscapes can demonstrate the conservation value of corridors more convincingly than can controlled experiments on animal movement. Such field observations relate directly to the type of animals (e.g. dispersing juveniles of target species) and the real landscapes that are the subject of decisions about corridor preservation. Future observational studies of animal movements should attempt to detect extra-corridor movements and focus on fragmentation-sensitive species for which corridors are likely to be proposed’.

Consequently, our investigations involved observations of the trajectories of animals dispersing naturally in the parts of Manningham that had been identified as potential corridors in need of protection, as well as possible locations of extra-corridor movements. Attempts were made to observe the paths of birds, mammals and butterflies, but only birds provided enough data to be statistically useful.

Nearly all the fieldwork was done by Scott Baker and David Lockwood, under the direction of Dr Graeme Lorimer. They worked together for some of the work to ensure a consistent approach. The work was done in two periods: A campaign in summer (December 2006 to February 2007) and another in autumn (April-May 2007) at the same sites. These periods were chosen to optimise the detection of dispersal of the most corridor-dependent animals such as summer migrants and dispersing young. Spring was avoided because movements of many fauna species at that time of year are dominated by local trips to and from nests, not the types of movement of interest in this study. Observations were taken mostly in the early morning in fair weather to maximise the expected amount of faunal movement. At one site, a sequence of observations was taken from sunrise to sunset to characterise the diurnal pattern of faunal movements.

Thirty observing locations around Manningham were chosen to check which species (if any) showed clear tendencies to move along particular alignments. Some of the locations were positioned where the existence of wildlife corridors had been postulated. Some groups of sites were chosen in close proximity to each other but with different vegetation or topographic position, to find out whether the factors that differed influenced the movements of the fauna being observed.

For periods of twenty minutes each, the observers mapped the trajectories of all wildlife that they could see from a fixed vantage point. The mapped trajectories reflect the overall direction of movement through the area under surveillance, averaging out any erratic, small-scale movements such as the zigzagging of thornbills from branch to branch. The continual back and forth movements of Welcome Swallows were intractable and therefore excluded from the analysis.



Figure 2. Example of a field map of animal movements, overlaid on a map of Mullum Mullum Ck. The observer’s vantage point is at the centre of the circles, which indicate scale.

An example of a map for a twenty-minute period is shown in Figure 2, which is for a site beside Mullum Mullum Ck in Currawong Bush Park, Warrandyte. Observers carried magnetic compasses to orient the top of each map to north. Each observed trajectory was drawn as an arrow whose position, orientation and length matches the animal’s movement. The arrows were labelled with abbreviated species names and the number of individuals involved; e.g. ‘N.M. 1’ on Figure 2 represents one Noisy Miner. Fauna that flew over the area of view without alighting were marked as ‘AC’ for ‘above canopy’, to indicate that they may not have been using habitat in the area under surveillance. Nests and stationary fauna, such as koalas, were marked on the maps without arrows. Fauna that were heard but not seen, or whose trajectories could not be determined, were recorded on a list next to the map.

This process was repeated at least three times (replicates), one after another at the same location, to gather statistics about how variable the results are between replicates. For each set of replicates, the observers recorded air temperature, cloud cover, wind speed and any other significant atmospheric conditions such as smoke haze.

At each location, observers recorded any usage of habitat that was observed, such as drinking from water, foraging in dense bushes, hunting from exposed branches or cruising over treetops. Other habitat features such as logs or tree hollows were also noted.

Overall, 135 maps like Figure 2 were compiled, containing trajectories for a total of 3,074 individual animals. These comprised one Echidna, three Common Brown butterflies and 3,070 birds in 78 species. Only the birds provide enough data for statistical analysis.

We also compiled 51 lists of fauna for which no trajectory could be mapped (e.g. those which were stationary or seen only fleetingly). These lists contained one species of butterfly, three species of frog, five species of mammal and sixty-eight species of bird.

Collectively, the trajectory maps and the lists of unmapped fauna contained ninety-nine species. These are tabulated in the Appendix.

N

Observer position



4. Analysis of Fieldwork Data Figure 2 is typical of many of the trajectory maps in showing a clear tendency for bird movements to be aligned along a particular axis, but it is important to express this quantitatively and check for statistical significance.

Each trajectory can be characterised by its orientation, length and location relative to the observer. The orientation is the parameter that carries most value for detecting pathways of fauna movement and hence the location of wildlife corridors. Consequently, the statistical aspects of the following analysis relate solely to the orientations of the trajectories. The location of the trajectories relative to the observers are analysed qualitatively where they carry useful information.

4.1 Measuring the Consistency of Travel Directions

Figure 3 shows a conventional histogram and a directional histogram that both depict the distribution of travel directions displayed in Figure 2 and the subsequent three twenty-minute intervals. This illustrates how the circular nature of the data (i.e. ranging from 0° to 359° and then jumping back to 0°) lends itself to depiction and analysis using techniques specifically designed for directional data.

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Figure 3. Two forms of histogram summarising the directions of bird movements over an eighty minute period beside Mullum Mullum Ck.

For most purposes, it is the orientation of a trajectory’s axis that matters (e.g north-south), not which of the two directions along that axis (e.g. north as opposed to south). Figure 4 shows a directional histogram which combines data from the two directions along each axis, thereby giving a clearer and more statistically robust indication of the important axes of observed wildlife movement at that site.



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Figure 4. Diagram of the number of animal movements along four axes (north-south, east-west,

northeast-southwest and northwest-southeast) from the same data as Figure 3. There was only one animal observation for the northwest-southeast direction, so that axis is almost invisible. The axis at a bearing of 29° is the vector average for the data.

Figure 4 shows a clear tendency for animal movements in this eighty-minute observing period to be aligned along an axis from north-northeast to south-southwest. However, a quantitative expression of that tendency and its statistical significance requires mathematical analysis of the directional statistics.

Because of the directional nature of the data, the mathematical analysis must be done with what are known as circular statistics. The key statistics are the vector mean and the circular standard deviation (Fisher 1996, Mardia 1972). In addition, to combine the data for animals heading in exactly opposite directions (as in Figure 4), the analysis can be done by doubling the direction of each observed trajectory and reducing the results modulo 360°. The detailed mathematics can be provided to interested readers.

As an example of the circular statistics, the vector average axis direction for the data in Figures 3 and 4 is at a bearing of 29° (shown in red on the diagram) and the circular standard deviation is also 29°. The vector average direction aligns extremely closely to the orientation of Mullum Mullum Ck at the observing point, as can be seen from Figure 2. The data from the individual replicates at this site consistently showed that the observed trajectories (all from birds) had vector mean directions that aligned with the creek.

In general, the greater the degree of concentration of trajectories along a particular axis, the smaller the circular standard deviation and the greater the confidence we can have that the landscape is providing a corridor for the observed animals – provided that there are enough trajectories to make the statistics significant.

Statistical significance can be tested using the Rayleigh Uniformity Test (Section 4.3 of Fisher 1996), which tests the probability of the null hypothesis that the animals’ trajectories are randomly oriented. In the example above, this probability is 10-13, meaning that there is negligible probability that the observed trajectories were randomly oriented. We can therefore have confidence that the apparent tendency of birds to move along Mullum Mullum Ck in this set of observations is real.

The same types of graphical and statistical analysis described above can be applied to subsets of data, e.g.:



• To detect dependence of corridor movements on time of day;

• To see how much difference there is in the tendency of different types of animals (e.g. waterbirds, forest birds, birds of prey) to follow a particular axis; or

• To see whether these different groups of animals follow different axes with different directions.

There has been insufficient time to allow much analysis of subsets.

4.2 The Importance of Streams

The example from Mullum Mullum Ck in Currawong Bush Park that was used in Section 10 shows clearly and with very high statistical confidence that birds in that experiment showed a very strong tendency to move parallel to the creek. Data from other months at that site, and at other observing sites beside streams, provided further support for the conclusion of many other studies that stream corridors are extremely important for movement of wildlife.

Table 1 summarises the statistics for all the observing sites beside streams and gullies. The difference in angle between the creek orientation and the vector mean direction of the observed wildlife trajectories is rounded to the nearest 10°, which is still a higher level of precision than can be expected for mapping trajectories in the field or specifying the orientation of a stream that meanders.

Table 1. Statistics of wildlife movements observed at sites beside streams and gullies. Note that the last four rows have P-values that indicate low statistical significance.

Location No. Traj-ectories

Angle between stream & mean

trajectory Standard Deviation Rayleigh P

Mullum Mullum Ck at Currawong Bush Park 203 0° 38° 3×10-16

Mullum Mullum Ck at Buck Reserve 135 40° 51° 3×10-3

Mullum Mullum Ck, 50 m south of Heads Rd 287 10° 46° 5×10-10

Andersons Ck at Husseys Lane 116 10° 37º 2×10-10

Andersons Ck, 150 m south of Husseys Lane 87 10° 52° 4×10-2

Andersons Ck at Falconer Rd 263 20° 23° 6×10-58

Brushy Ck at Lower Homestead Rd 146 0° 40° 2×10-10

Jumping Ck at Brysons Rd 156 30° 38° 2×10-12

Glynne Rd drainage reserve 111 0° 48° 1×10-3

Gully at 145 Jumping Creek Rd, Wonga Park 107 10° 43° 6×10-6

Gully, The One Hundred Acres, Park Orchards 41 20° 31º 1×10-6

Pambara Ct, Donvale 60 0° 48° 3×10-2

Yarra River at Westerfolds Park 94 40° 49º 7×10-3

Yarra River at Stane Brae 19 10° 39º 0.4

Mullum Mullum Ck at Heidleberg-W’dyte Rd 28 50° 54º 0.5

Koonung Ck at Colston Close, Doncaster East 47 10° 60° 0.6





trajectory Standard Deviation Rayleigh P

Ruffey Ck at St Georges Av, Templestowe 106 80° 64º 0.5

Given the experimental uncertainty in the calculated angles between the creeks and the mean trajectories, it is perhaps surprising that such a high proportion of those figures in Table 1 are less than 30° and often 0-10°. At most creeks and gullies surveyed, there was a very strong tendency for fauna to move preferentially along the axis of the stream or gully. This applies whether the stream or gully is surrounded by large areas of forest (e.g. The One Hundred Acres) or where there is only a narrow corridor of riparian vegetation (e.g. Brushy Creek). The data confirms functioning wildlife corridors along Mullum Mullum Ck, Andersons Ck, Brushy Ck, Jumping Ck and three forested gullies without perennial streams.

The data for Brushy Ck at Lower Homestead Rd in Wonga Park is important because the riparian corridor there is rudimentary, with little more than an interrupted, narrow gallery of paperbarks and occasional eucalypts on the creek bank. Nevertheless, there was a very strong tendency for the observed trajectories to follow the creek. This included some quite ecologically important species such as the Shining Bronze-Cuckoo, Brown Goshawk and Grey Fantail. This was quite noticeable in the field. The implication is that even a rudimentary corridor like Brushy Ck can be very important as a wildlife corridor for birds within a largely agricultural landscape. Unpublished fieldwork conducted for Melbourne Water has also shown that the waters of Brushy Ck support occasional movement of Platypus and native fish, adding to the importance of this corridor.

Pambara Ct has been constructed over the top of a filled-in former creek, flanked by large residential properties with patchy, degraded native vegetation. The data in Table 1 indicate that birds still have a tendency to follow the topography of the former creek, even though the creek no longer exists. The statistics show that this tendency is not as strong as most other riparian sites, but it is notable that there should be any tendency at all. This accords with the findings of Lorimer (2006) that even highly interrupted and developed creek alignments in the City of Boroondara, such as Gardiners Ck and Back Ck, appeared to be used as corridors by nomadic and migratory birds.

The gully at 145 Jumping Creek Rd was in poor ecological condition and does not have a perennial stream, but it, too, can be seen from Table 1 to support movement of birds that are strongly aligned with the axis of the gully. The Black Wallaby is also frequently observed to move along similar gullies locally.

The last four or five lines in Table 1 superficially appear to suggest that there was little sign of corridor usage at those sites. However, inspection of the raw data and plotting of directional histograms show that there were two axes of movement: one parallel to the stream and the other perpendicular. At the Yarra River sites, there was a pronounced tendency for birds to move either along the riparian vegetation parallel to the river or directly across the river to get to the opposite side. This type of bimodal orientation of trajectories confounds the statistical measures in Table 1; e.g. the average direction between two axes oriented at right angles is undefined and the circular standard deviation is large if there are similar numbers of trajectories along each axis.

To test for such bimodal movements along perpendicular directions, the same statistical measures can be used as before but applied after doubling the raw trajectory directions. The results from such an analysis appear in Table 2. It should be borne in mind that the orientation



of perpendicular axes (which form a ‘×’ shape) is confined within a range of 0-90°, so one should expect smaller values of the standard deviation and the angle between the creeks and the mean trajectories.

Table 2. Statistics of wildlife movements with two perpendicular favoured directions.



trajectories Standard Deviation Rayleigh P

Mullum Mullum Ck at Buck Reserve 135 0° & 90° 27° 1×10-2

Yarra River at Westerfolds Park 94 0° & 90° 17º 3×10-11

Yarra River at Stane Brae 19 0° & 90° 12º 1×10-5

Mullum Mullum Ck at Heidleberg-W’dyte Rd 28 0° & 90° 22º 6×10-2

Koonung Ck at Colston Close, Doncaster East 47 0° & 90° 16° 2×10-7

Ruffey Ck at St Georges Av, Templestowe 106 10° & 80° 16º 6×10-15

The improvement in statistical significance (P-value) when assuming two perpendicular axes of movement (Table 2) as opposed to the corresponding data in Table 1 is striking, which gives confidence that the perpendicular motions apparent on the field maps are statistically meaningful.

The other striking feature of Table 2 is that at all sites except Ruffey Creek, the axes of movement were very closely aligned to directions that are parallel and perpendicular to the streams, within the range of experimental uncertainty. The Ruffey Ck site is on a slight S-bend of the creek, which confounds the assignment of a single orientation to the creek, and the apparent slight angle between the trajectories’ axes and the creek suggested in Table 2 is well within the uncertainty of the assigned creek orientation. The extremely low P-value means that the birds had strong inclinations to move along either of the two perpendicular axes.

We can now conclude with confidence that the observed wildlife trajectories (mostly birds) at all riparian sites had a significant tendency to be parallel to the associated stream or gully, and that at some sites (particularly the Yarra River) there was an additional axis of movement perpendicular to the stream. All streams and gullies, from the most natural to the most modified, function as wildlife corridors, regardless of the width of native vegetation on either side of the stream or gully.

The phenomenon of a secondary axis of bird movements perpendicular to a stream makes ecological sense for a range of birds which glean food along both banks of a stream, as well as for species such as the Little Raven and Australian Magpie that favour developed land and are looking for the shortest route across a riparian habitat which is not as attractive to them as what is one either side. An investigation of the species of birds that are most strongly associated with perpendicular movements would be an interesting project. Superficially, it appears that birds of prey, waterbirds and small insect-eating forest birds have particularly strong tendencies to move parallel to streams and gullies, while common urban birds are among those most likely to travel perpendicular.



4.2.1 Implications for Council

The strength of the empirical evidence about the value of all the surveyed streams and gullies as wildlife corridors for birds gives a strong impetus for Manningham City Council to protect and enhance habitat along all streams and gullies. Council can do this through:

• Revegetation and habitat restoration;

• Community support programs;

• Cooperation with Melbourne Water; and

• Regulation of developments near streams and gullies through the Manningham Planning Scheme.

4.3 Relative Importance of Creeks and Habitat Quality

Simultaneous sets of animal trajectory observations were taken at nearby sites in Currawong Bush Park: the site beside Mullum Mullum Ck discussed in Sections 4.1 and 4.2 and a site approximately 120 m away on a forested hillside (Figure 5). The purpose was to determine the extent of difference in wildlife presence and movements between a riparian site and a nearby non-riparian site.

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54

Figure 5. Two nearby simultaneous observing sites in Currawong Bush Park, marked in green.

At each site, three twenty-minute periods of observations were conducted on each of three separate days: 20/1/07, 26/1/07 and 25/4/07. Mr Baker and Mr Lockwood swapped sites occasionally to avoid concerns about any bias from differences in their observing skills and so that each could gain a personal impression of the differences between these sites.



The two sites have different topography, vegetation communities and ecological condition of the vegetation. As assessed by Lorimer (2009), the riparian site is on a floodplain with Riparian Forest in poor ecological condition and the hillside site is within Valley Grassy Forest in fair ecological condition. The riparian site is much closer to a residential subdivision, bridal trail and the Mullum Mullum Trail, and one might expect that those features would discourage some fauna from spending time there.

The differences between the simultaneous wildlife observations at the two sites were profound, as summarised in Table 3. The riparian site’s observations included far more species and trajectories (in total and in each session) than the hillside site, and only the riparian site showed any statistically significant tendency for wildlife movements to have a preferred alignment. As discussed in Section 4.2, the mean direction at the riparian site aligns with the creek, to the accuracy of the measurements.

Table 3. Statistics of data from the two nearby sites at Currawong Bush Park.

Location Total No. Species

Average No. Species/Day

No. Trajec-tories

Mean Direction

(magnetic) Standard Deviation Rayleigh P

Riparian site 43 23.7 203 23° 38° 3×10-16

Hillside site 26 14.7 44 51° 54° 0.3

Perhaps surprisingly, the riparian site was consistently richer in species than the nearby hillside site despite the vegetation condition being poorer and despite the proximity to houses, a bridal trail and the Mullum Mullum Trail. Possible reasons why this may be the case are:

• The riparian site is on a wildlife corridor whereas the hillside site is not (based on the Rayleigh P-values); and

• The riparian site has a higher primary productivity (i.e. harnessing the sun’s energy to fuel the food chain through photosynthesis) than a hillside site, because of the higher availability of moisture and nutrients.

Other habitat features such as tree hollows and presence of shrubs appear to favour the hillside site.

The observations strongly suggest that the presence of riparian habitat can override the importance of other aspects of habitat for birds. This is also anecdotally true for some other fauna; For example, the Black Wallaby is normally found in close proximity to creeks and is most commonly seen moving along the contours. Obviously, aquatic fauna such as Platypus, frogs and many invertebrates are associated with riparian habitat.

These findings about the pre-eminence of riparian habitat for wildlife add local support to similar findings in many other studies elsewhere in Australia and overseas. They reinforce the implications in Section 4.2.1 for a high level of protection and restoration of riparian habitat.

4.4 Corridor Bottlenecks

Simultaneous sets of animal trajectory observations were taken at nearby sites near Mullum Mullum Ck at the former White’s Orchard, south of Bucks Reserve in Donvale. Figure 5 shows the two sites approximately 160 metres apart, one beside the creek in the northwest corner of the former orchard and the other in the middle of the former orchard. The former



orchard retained scattered fruit trees at the time of the survey, but it was still quite open and served the purpose of determining how a wildlife corridor would function where the width of riparian native vegetation abruptly contracted into a bottleneck. The former orchard measures 150 m from north to south.

Figure 6. Two nearby simultaneous observing sites at White’s Orchard, marked in red.

At the time of the survey, the bare area above retained scattered orchard trees.

At each of these companion sites, three twenty-minute periods of observations were conducted on each of 20/1/07 and 26/1/07. As in Section 4.3, Mr Baker and Mr Lockwood swapped sites during the experiment to avoid concerns about any bias from differences in their observing skills, and also so that each observer could gain a personal impression of the differences between the two sites.

Figure 7 is indicative of the results at the northwestern site, which is right at the northern end of the bottleneck in the native vegetation. Five east-west trajectories are seen along the southern edge of the forest to the northeast, and the north-south movements are funnelled into the bottleneck. This gives rise to strongly bimodal trajectory axes, parallel and perpendicular to the creek. In the replicated sets of data, there are consistently clusters of trajectories along the southern edge of the bushland adjacent to the former orchard and a concentration of north-south trajectories along the bottleneck of native vegetation.

Mul

lum

M

ullu

m

Cre

ek



Figure 7. A field map overlaid on part of the aerial photograph from Figure 6.

The field map is oriented to magnetic north, as in the fieldwork.

The observations at the site in the middle of the former orchard show that although many birds may be funnelled into the vegetation bottleneck along Mullum Mullum Ck, there are still substantial numbers of individuals of certain bird species that fly across the orchard. Eastern Rosellas and Rainbow Lorikeets made up the majority of these birds, eating fruit on the scattered trees.

The trajectories across the orchard show a strong concentration along at least three axes. Some of these were probably associated with paths between specific fruiting trees, but the observers noted consistent, longer movements along the north-south axis between the areas of native vegetation in these directions. In other words, some birds flew straight across the middle of the orchard rather than converge into the bottleneck along the creek. The main species involved in this sort of motion were the Australian Magpie, Rainbow Lorikeet, Noisy Miner and Galah (all common urban birds rather than forest birds), but two Mistletoebirds and two Australian King Parrots (both forest birds) also took this route.

It appears that while many birds converge into the bottleneck along the creek rather than cross the more open expanse of the old orchard, certain species were not deterred from flying directly across the orchard.




This experiment provides evidence that a bottleneck in a wildlife corridor can act as a choke on the movements of most forest bird species, and many fewer species were found to be prepared to cross the open expanse. Council can help promote freer movements of birds (and no doubt other fauna such as koalas and wallabies) along corridors by:

• Revegetating to fill gaps in corridors and broaden bottlenecks;

• Fostering similar work on private land, e.g. through incentive programs or ‘offset’ conditions on planning permits; and

• Preventing further gaps and constrictions in corridors of vegetation through the Manningham Planning Scheme.

5. Wildlife Movement through Treed Residential Areas The field data from nearly all sites in this study exhibited statistically significant tendencies for birds to preferentially move in certain directions, particularly along valleys (even when there was scant vegetation to provide habitat along the valley). But while many birds follow valleys, there are still significant numbers of native birds observed on hilltops and ridges. There are also species of butterflies and other invertebrates that are known to move from hilltop to hilltop, and Koalas, Sugar Gliders and bats are regularly seen on high ground. There is a marked tendency for reports of these types of wildlife to be from areas with a reasonable cover of indigenous trees, in many parts of Manningham to the east of Mullum Mullum Ck.

The fieldwork in this study could not track trajectories of many invertebrates or nomadic vertebrates such as koalas. The numerous residents who reported their observations of wildlife were also unable to tell where such animals came from or went to. The regular seasonal appearance of many such animals indicates that they must move about the landscape but it has not been possible to determine their patterns of movement or the routes they take. The only clear pattern of behaviour is that there is far more diversity of wildlife, and particularly the more significant species such as koalas, in areas with a reasonable cover of indigenous trees.

This correlation is to be expected: Wildlife such as Koalas and Sugar Gliders rely heavily on indigenous trees for their food and (in some cases) tree hollows. Further support for the importance of indigenous trees in residential areas comes from White et al. (2005), who studied the bird communities of Melbourne’s eastern and southeastern suburbs (including Manningham). They concluded that:

‘Remnants of native vegetation act as vital refugia of indigenous fauna in the urban landscape. …the retention and establishment of native vegetation [=Australian native vegetation] within streetscapes can complement existing remnant vegetation and the bird communities contained therein.. Native streetscapes can potentially benefit native birds by:

• ‘Facilitating the movement of species throughout the urban landscape;

• ‘Providing habitat that is advantageous to native birds over introduced species; and



• ‘Enhancing remnant vegetation in parks by diffusing abrupt edges between remnants and the built environment and reducing levels of isolation between parks (e.g. Catterall et al. 1991).

‘Many of the benefits of native streetscapes for native birds, as outlined above, are not realised in exotic streetscapes, as evidenced by the findings of this study. Considering the benefits of native streetscapes for bird communities, the implementation of effective strategies and incentives that encourage the planting of native vegetation in streetscapes and gardens should be paramount. This should include the full complement of vegetation life-forms from ground covers to trees. Furthermore, it is likely that the planting of indigenous vegetation would be more beneficial for bird communities by providing resources more closely resembling those of park remnants. Recher (2003) suggests that retaining all remaining native vegetation should be paramount for future restoration actions.’

Note that ‘native vegetation’ in this quote refers to Australian native vegetation rather than remnant vegetation or indigenous species.

The superiority of Australian native trees (vis-à-vis exotics) as habitat for native insect fauna was demonstrated in the context of Perth by Bhullar and Majer (2000). Native reptiles are very dependent on an appropriate type of leaf litter for their habitat (Jellinek et al. 2004), and it is clear that most exotic trees provide a quite different leaf litter, and with different seasonality, than the trees with which Manningham’s reptiles have co-evolved.

It can therefore be concluded that indigenous tree cover (ideally with indigenous understorey) is important for the retention of wildlife that so many Manningham residents enjoy.

It is also important to note that small insect-eating birds do not persist in the absence of a shrub layer that provides them with cover from predators. The species of shrubs are also important. Exotic shrubs and certain Australian native shrubs with prolific nectar production can exacerbate an ecological imbalance between bird species, leading to displacement of small insect-eating birds by aggressive wattlebirds or miners. Loss of small insect-eating birds is associated with outbreaks of insect pests and consequent tree dieback, a major problem in Manningham.


Retention of wildlife in the area east of Mullum Mullum Ck can be fostered by Manningham City Council through:

• Protecting indigenous plants (and, to a lesser extent, non-invasive trees from other parts of Australia) in the Manningham Planning Scheme;

• Favouring locally indigenous plant species in landscaping projects, when such species meet other landscaping requirements; and

• Encouraging gardeners to provide habitat plants for wildlife, perhaps using the model of the ‘Gardens for Wildlife’ (run by Knox City Council and the Knox Environment Society).



6. The Effectiveness of Linear Revegetation One of the commitments of action A75 in Manningham’s Green Wedge Strategy was to identify the extent to which linear revegetation actually functions as a wildlife corridor.

A site in Candlebark Park, Templestowe, was included in this project’s fieldwork to look for signs of corridor movement along mature revegetation specifically planted with wildlife in mind. However, in an hour of observing, only ten birds were seen – all but one of them being common urban birds. (The exception was a Mistletoebird, which is also moderately common in suburban Manningham.) These observations not only provided too little data for analysis of trajectories, they were no more diverse than one typically observes in highly urbanised parts of Manningham.

These results should not be extrapolated to all revegetation, but it demonstrates that revegetation does not necessarily help native birds, even when this outcome was specifically sought.

We have therefore relied on literature to assess the likely value of linear revegetation for wildlife corridors. The information gleaned indicates that:

• Typical linear plantings often are used principally by common, aggressive bird species (e.g. the Noisy Miner and Red Wattlebird), mice and (sometimes) reptiles.

• Breadth of plantings appears to be important, to provide adequate cover. However, this can conflict with the concerns of some users of public land that habitat with good wildlife cover could also harbour undesirable elements of the human population.

• The vertical structure of plantings may also be important (as reflected in the quote above from White et al. 2005) to provide diversity of habitat and cover for smaller birds.

• Despite the limitations of typical narrow plantings, careful planting design is still likely to be well worthwhile for overcoming bottlenecks.

In combination, these pieces of information indicate that revegetation for wildlife corridors needs to be broad, fairly visually dense and contain plants of various sizes to provide a suitable vegetation structure. Broadening existing narrow corridors, such as along the corridor bottleneck of White’s Orchard in Section 4.4, appears to be an appropriate usage of revegetation to support wildlife movement, but the narrow strips commonly seen in Melbourne’s linear parks may be of little use or even counterproductive.

7. Strategic Improvement of Corridors Based on the findings in the rest of this report, the following locations have been identified as the best opportunities for revegetation to facilitate wildlife movements along corridors in Manningham:

• Along all sections of the banks of the Yarra River that have less than 20 m of width of native vegetation. (This is in the hands of Parks Victoria.);

• The Mullum Mullum Ck corridor beside Habitat Park Drive in Doncaster East (where revegetation has already begun);

• The bottleneck at White’s Orchard discussed in Section 4.4, where the work of this study has already brought about an increase in priority for planting to widen the bottleneck;



• The west bank of Mullum Mullum Ck, for 500 metres upstream from Tindals Rd;

• Along Andersons Creek from Warrandyte to The One Hundred Acres, where some revegetation has already been done on private land. (This recommendation was also in the 1996 Management Plan for The One Hundred Acres.);

• On (or adjacent to) 115-119 Hall Rd Warrandyte South, to fill a gap in the continuity of vegetation between The One Hundred Acres and the Glynne Rd area to the east. This relies on a sympathetic landowner;

• Bottlenecks and weak links on the Jumping Ck corridor in Wonga Park and Warrandyte South, at any or all of the following private properties: 86-96 Haslams Track, 18 Hooper Rd, 35 Hillcrest Rd, 129-133 Brysons Rd, 41 Gatters Rd and 37 Gatters Rd;

• Practically the full length of the Brushy Creek corridor in Wonga Park (on private land), to broaden the narrow corridor of vegetation and fill its gaps.

It is also recommended that Council consider establishing a program similar to the successful ‘Gardens for Wildlife’ program of Knox City Council and the Knox Environment Society.

8. Further Work The field data collected in this study far exceeded our expectations of useful outcomes. It has been analysed to the extent necessary for this report but much more analysis could be done; e.g. to determine differences in usage of corridors between different ecological groupings of birds.

9. Conclusion This study has fulfilled the commitment of Action A75 in the Manningham Green Wedge Strategy, as follows:

• Wildlife corridors have been found to be functioning along all streams and gullies that were inspected, ranging from the Yarra River to minor gullies with only rudimentary native vegetation. The topographic context along a stream or gully was found to be more important than the ecological condition of vegetation;

• Strategic corridors exist along all of Manningham’s streams, particularly the Yarra River, Mullum Mullum Ck, Andersons Ck, Jumping Ck, Brushy Ck and (to a lesser extent) Ruffey Ck and Koonung Ck;

• The Black Wallaby, most bird species, Platypus and most other aquatic species move preferentially along stream corridors or gullies;

• Revegetation could assist the functioning of the key wildlife corridors, as discussed in Section 7, but narrow linear plantings are not recommended. Council can conduct revegetation itself as well as fostering revegetation by private landowners and Melbourne Water;

• There are other steps that Manningham City Council can take to improve the mobility of wildlife:



o Using the permit approval process and the Environmental Significance Overlay in the Manningham Planning Scheme to limit habitat fragmentation by land development and vegetation removal, with particular emphasis on stream corridors and gullies;

o Using the Manningham Planning Scheme to protect indigenous plants in treed residential areas of Manningham (as well as, to a lesser extent, protecting non-invasive trees from other parts of Australia);

o Managing its own bushland reserves in ways that minimise fragmentation, e.g. when choosing alignments for firebreaks or deciding priority areas for habitat restoration;

o Favouring locally indigenous plant species in landscaping projects, when such species meet other landscaping requirements;

o Encouraging gardeners to provide habitat plants for wildlife, perhaps using the model of the ‘Gardens for Wildlife’ (run by Knox City Council and the Knox Environment Society).

References Beier P. and Noss R.F. (1998). Do habitat corridors provide connectivity? Conservation

Biology 12 (6): 1241-1252. Bhullar S. and Majer J. (2000). Arthropods on street trees: a food resource for wildlife. Pacific

Conservation Biology 6:171-173. Byrne M., Elliott C.P., Yates C. and Coates D.J. (2007). Extensive pollen dispersal in a bird-

pollinated shrub, Calothamnus quadrifidus, in a fragmented landscape. Molecular Ecology 16:1303–1314.

Byrne M., Elliott C.P., Yates C. and Coates D.J. (2008). Maintenance of high pollen dispersal in Eucalyptus wandoo, a dominant tree of the fragmented agricultural region in Western Australia. Conserv. Genet. 9:97-105.

Catterall C.P., Green R.J. and Jones D.N. (1991) Habitat use by birds across a forest-suburb interface in Brisbane: implications for corridors. In: Saunders D.A. and Hobbs R.J. (Eds.) ‘Nature Conservation 2: The Role of Corridors’. Surrey Beatty and Sons : Chipping Norton, pp. 247-258.

Fisher N.I. (1996). ‘Statistical Analysis of Circular Data’, 2nd Edn. Cambridge University Press. 296 pp.

Foreman P. (2004). ‘Manningham BioSites – Manningham City Council Sites of (Biological) Significance Review’. Manningham City Council : Doncaster, Victoria. 196 pp. + 64 maps.

Jellinek S., Driscoll D.A. and Kirkpatrick J.B. (2004). Environmental and vegetation variables have a greater influence than habitat fragmentation in structuring lizard communities in remnant urban bushland. Austral Ecology 29:294-304.

Lorimer G.S. (2006). ‘Inventory and Assessment of Indigenous Flora and Fauna in Boroondara’, 1st edition, for the City of Boroondara. 480 pp.

Lorimer G.S. (2009). ‘Currawong Reserves Ecological Assessment 2009’. Report to Manningham City Council.

Lowe A.J., Boshier D., Ward M., Bacles C.F.E. and Navarro C. (2005). Genetic resource impacts of habitat loss and degradation; reconciling empirical evidence and predicted theory for neotropical trees. Heredity 95:255–273.

Mardia K.V. (1972). ‘Statistics of Directional Data’. Academic Press, London.



White G.M., Boshier D.H. and Powell W. (2002). Increased pollen flow counteracts fragmentation in a tropical dry forest, an example from Swietenia humilis Zuccarini. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 99:2038–2042.

White J.G., Antos M.J, Fitzsimons J.A. and Palmer G.C. (2005). Non-uniform bird assemblages in urban environments: the influence of streetscape vegetation. Landscape and Urban Planning 71:123-135.



Appendix – Summary of Fauna Observations The following table lists the species observed during the fieldwork for this project and, for each one, the total numbers of individuals whose trajectories were mapped. The column headed ‘Code No.’ gives the code numbers of species in the Census of Australian Vertebrate Species (CAVS).

An asterisk before a species’ name indicates that it is introduced. Within each major fauna group (e.g. Birds), species are ordered according to the taxonomic sequence presently used by the Department of Sustainability & Environment.

Code No. Common Name Scientific Name No. Traj-

ectories

Butterfly

Common Brown Heteronympha merope merope 3

Mammals

1003 Short-beaked Echidna Tachyglossus aculeatus 1 1162 Koala Phascolarctos cinereus 0 1129 Common Ringtail Possum Pseudocheirus peregrinus 0 1265 Eastern Grey Kangaroo Macropus giganteus 0 1510 *European Rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus 0

Frogs

3134 Common Froglet Crinia signifera 0 3182 Southern Brown Tree Frog Litoria ewingii 0 3906 Verreaux’s Tree Frog Litoria verreauxii verreauxii 0

Birds

207 Australian Shelduck Tadorna tadornoides 2 202 Australian Wood Duck Chenonetta jubata 40 208 Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosa 27 210 Chestnut Teal Anas castanea 3 100 Little Pied Cormorant Phalacrocorax melanoleucos 3 99 Pied Cormorant Phalacrocorax varius 1 97 Little Black Cormorant Phalacrocorax sulcirostris 1 96 Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo 1

188 White-faced Heron Egretta novaehollandiae 1 179 Australian White Ibis Threskiornis molucca 4 180 Straw-necked Ibis Threskiornis spinicollis 4 182 Yellow-billed Spoonbill Platalea flavipes 0 232 Black-shouldered Kite Elanus axillaris 0 221 Brown Goshawk Accipiter fasciatus 1 222 Collared Sparrowhawk Accipiter cirrhocephalus 2 224 Wedge-tailed Eagle Aquila audax 3 237 Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus 2 46 Buff-banded Rail Gallirallus philippensis 1 56 Dusky Moorhen Gallinula tenebrosa 4

133 Masked Lapwing Vanellus miles 1 957 *Rock Dove Columba livia 2 989 *Spotted Turtle-Dove Streptopelia chinensis 27 34 Common Bronzewing Phaps chalcoptera 14 43 Crested Pigeon Ocyphaps lophotes 18

267 Yellow-tailed Black-CockatooCalyptorhynchus funereus 10 268 Gang-gang Cockatoo Callocephalon fimbriatum 2 273 Galah Cacatua roseicapilla 77 272 Long-billed Corella Cacatua tenuirostris 38




ectories 271 Little Corella Cacatua sanguinea 1 269 Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Cacatua galerita 126 254 Rainbow Lorikeet Trichoglossus haematodus 786 258 Musk Lorikeet Glossopsitta concinna 82 260 Little Lorikeet Glossopsitta pusilla 0 281 Australian King-Parrot Alisterus scapularis 29 282 Crimson Rosella Platycercus elegans 27 288 Eastern Rosella Platycercus eximius 245 295 Red-rumped Parrot Psephotus haematonotus 2 344 Shining Bronze-Cuckoo Chrysococcyx lucidus 1 248 Powerful Owl Ninox strenua 0 242 Southern Boobook Ninox novaeseelandiae 0 313 Tawny Frogmouth Podargus strigoides 0 334 White-throated Needletail Hirundapus caudacutus 100 322 Laughing Kookaburra Dacelo novaeguineae 22 326 Sacred Kingfisher Todiramphus sanctus 2 558 White-throated Treecreeper Cormobates leucophaeus 0 529 Superb Fairy-wren Malurus cyaneus 14 565 Spotted Pardalote Pardalotus punctatus 21 976 Striated Pardalote Pardalotus striatus 6 488 White-browed Scrubwren Sericornis frontalis 10 465 Weebill Smicrornis brevirostris 8 475 Brown Thornbill Acanthiza pusilla 34 486 Yellow-rumped Thornbill Acanthiza chrysorrhoa 9 471 Yellow Thornbill Acanthiza nana 0 470 Striated Thornbill Acanthiza lineata 28 638 Red Wattlebird Anthochaera carunculata 181 637 Little Wattlebird Anthochaera chrysoptera 0 633 Bell Miner Manorina melanophrys 39 634 Noisy Miner Manorina melanocephala 303 614 Yellow-faced Honeyeater Lichenostomus chrysops 34 617 White-eared Honeyeater Lichenostomus leucotis 1 625 White-plumed Honeyeater Lichenostomus penicillatus 2 583 Brown-headed Honeyeater Melithreptus brevirostris 0 578 White-naped Honeyeater Melithreptus lunatus 45 631 New Holland Honeyeater Phylidonyris novaehollandiae 9 591 Eastern Spinebill Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris 5 392 Eastern Yellow Robin Eopsaltria australis 1 416 Crested Shrike-tit Falcunculus frontatus 0 398 Golden Whistler Pachycephala pectoralis 2 401 Rufous Whistler Pachycephala rufiventris 1 408 Grey Shrike-thrush Colluricincla harmonica 3 366 Satin Flycatcher Myiagra cyanoleuca 1 415 Magpie-lark Grallina cyanoleuca 58 361 Grey Fantail Rhipidura fuliginosa 15 364 Willie Wagtail Rhipidura leucophrys 5 424 Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike Coracina novaehollandiae 6 671 Olive-backed Oriole Oriolus sagittatus 1 702 Grey Butcherbird Cracticus torquatus 15 705 Australian Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen 109 694 Pied Currawong Strepera graculina 9 930 Australian Raven Corvus coronoides 1 954 Little Raven Corvus mellori 79 693 White-winged Chough Corcorax melanorhamphos 0 662 Red-browed Finch Neochmia temporalis 25 996 European Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis 14 564 Mistletoebird Dicaeum hirundinaceum 14 357 Welcome Swallow Hirundo neoxena 62 574 Silvereye Zosterops lateralis 31




ectories 991 *Common Blackbird Turdus merula 24 999 *Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris 84 998 *Common Myna Acridotheres tristis 49

Wildlife Movement and Habitat Needs in Manningham

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