Bitterns in Rice Project

You’ve seen him survive a 557 kilometre dispersal and that ordeal at sea. Robbie is clearly a strong and healthy young bittern. Here are two photos showing you his feisty side. After we’d attached the transmitter and as we were about to release him, the sock came off his head. He was raring to go, and have a go at us. Further down, you’ll see one of Robbie’s large wings that are serving him so well.

He is still in the Long Swamp area of south-western Victoria and getting to know it intimately. Robbie represents the future generations of bitterns and may just end up being the most popular bittern ever. Beyond Australia, he has people from New Zealand to Nepal following his journey. Tracking Bunyip Birds researcher, Inka Veltheim, has suggested that I end my policy of no tattoos with: “Robbie 4EVA”. I’m considering it.

But not all of the Australasian Bitterns made it to their non-breeding wetlands this year. Last month, we found a pile of bittern feathers with a fox poo on top, a rather subtle indication of the likely cause of death.

This season, we found eight bittern nests on five of our randomly selected rice farm study sites. There is no longer any doubt about widespread breeding. Importantly, we confirmed that they can breed successfully in rice, producing fully fledged young. In future seasons, we want to learn about the things that affect their breeding success so we can maximise the number of young that the rice yields. We now know that chicks in rice are fed frogs and carp, and we suspect the abundance of bittern prey will be among the key factors. It’s great watching Robbie’s journey, yet the 2015-2016 rice season can’t come soon enough.

Robbie, with the head-sock off, just prior to release after attaching satellite transmitter.

One of Robbie’s wings, photographed after attaching the satellite transmitter on April 21st, 2015. 

The habitat at Long Swamp where Robbie was seen by Nature Glenelg Trust staff (Photo: Lachie Farrington)

Feathers from an Australasian Bittern found near Leeton, presumably dead as a result of fox predation.

Australasian Bittern nest in a rice crop near Griffith, one of eight found in 2015.

It just keeps getting better. Yesterday, Robbie was sighted at Long Swamp by staff from Nature Glenelg Trust. This is what Lachie Farrington had to say:

“… we had a good view and for a couple of blokes who know nothing about animal tracking/transmitters etc., the small attachment on his back was pretty obvious. It was kinda weird seeing a rare bird in the middle of nowhere and being on a first name basis. A field highlight which will be hard to top – just wish I had my camera ready.”

The folks at Nature Glenelg Trust are thrilled that Robbie has been checking out their wetland restoration trials at Long Swamp. Some of the works have only just been completed over the past fortnight. They think he has very good taste in wetlands and that they might just end up being mates for life. Check out the photos of what Robbie has been seeing in the last few days here.

Mark Bachmann sums up the whole situation well:

“For two concurrent and previously unrelated conservation projects to come together like this, when one of those projects started over 500 km away in NSW, I reckon is a pretty amazing, meaningful coincidence!”

In other news, things looked grim earlier this week. Robbie was about 1.5 kilometres out at sea in bad weather. He was there for a minimum of almost three hours and then his transmitter went into its scheduled off-cycle. If he wasn’t dead already, we thought it might be inevitable. It’s common in other species for the majority of young birds to die in their first year. How would we break the news to all of his fans? Clearly surviving the ordeal, it turns out that Robbie was flying into 40-50 km/h winds, moving backwards at about 1 km/h. He managed to return to Long Swamp in time to be seen yesterday. What a relief.

Back in the Riverina and despite concerted efforts over the past week, we’ll now have to wait until next rice season to get more bitterns away with transmitters. Massive thanks to all of the rice growers in the eastern Murray Valley for helping us find some of the last few sneaks hiding out in unharvested rice, just like the one below on Monday morning. Are these stragglers the ones that stay in the region over winter or are they also about to fly far away? All will be revealed in good time, but we’re so pleased to have Robbie. Thanks to everyone who has made all of this possible.