ON THE WING

Each year, birdwatchers in Tasmania monitor populations of migratory shorebirds – and each year they record staggering declines in the number of these remarkable birds.

BirdLife Tasmania has the longest data sets of shorebird numbers, stretching back more than 40 years. These figures make sobering reading.

One species of the birds commonly called waders, the curlew sandpiper, is hardly ever recorded in Tasmania these days, after being counted in the thousands just a few years ago. Another, the eastern curlew (pictured), has decreased by 95 per cent and is listed as critically endangered.

There are two wader counts in Tasmania: at the height of summer when the migratory birds have arrived from their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere, and another in winter. The latter is designed to record what waders might be overwintering in Tasmania – mainly juveniles – and numbers of the non-migratory species, such as pied and sooty oystercatchers.

As usual in mid-July, I took telescope, binoculars, pen and paper to the coastline around Dodges Ferry to play my part in the bird winter census, which covers all of Tasmania’s mudflats and wetlands.

I wasn’t that hopeful of seeing eastern curlews – the biggest and most dramatic wader standing 66cm – which are rare in winter at the best of times.

The curlews once flew in such great numbers across southern Tasmania in summer that they were shot for the pot in their thousands around Sorell.

The decline in migratory shorebirds is largely attributed to vanishing wetlands along their migratory route, while another threat is the draining of wetlands along the coast of Australia.

As the great northern migration was getting under way earlier in the year, conservationists lost the first round of a fight to halt a proposed development at a vital feeding ground in Queensland.

BirdLife Australia, of which the Tasmanian group is an affiliate, has long campaigned against the port and marina development at Toondah Harbour at Moreton Bay but Federal Minister for the Environment Josh Frydenberg announced he was allowing the proponents, the Walker Group, to carry out an environmental impact assessment.

BirdLife Australia has in the past pointed out that Moreton Bay embraces wetlands that have international conservation status.

The ornithological organisation is hopeful the Walker Group plan will be rejected.

In the meantime, BirdLife Tasmania members are assessing the results of the summer and winter surveys – and so far the figures are worrying.