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Researchers at The University of Western Australia are seeking volunteers to help them track the movements of Carnaby's cockatoo in the Perth metropolitan area by recording sightings of the bird onto a website.

Assistant Professor Nicola Mitchell, from UWA's School of Animal Biology, said the research would be based on ‘citizen science', where members of the public help researchers involved in bird conservation projects.  It was a concept that had worked well in the United States, she said, and many Australian projects are now underway.

"While there is some information on the birds' diet, nesting and breeding sites in the Perth metropolitan area, we are interested in trying to track their movement in urban areas," Assistant Professor Mitchell said.

"It is expensive to deploy large numbers of birds with tracking devices, so we want to try a different approach in urban areas where the public contribute sightings and behavioural observations to a website.  If we have a large number of volunteers contributing information, we should be able to piece together where they're going.

"For this project to be successful we need to encourage as many people as we can to help us keep an eye on their movements."

Researcher Kristina Huelin, a fourth-year wildlife management student at UWA, said there were birds roosting at a number of metropolitan locations.

"But we don't know where these flocks go once they leave the roosting site.  This project will help us in determining whether the cockatoos follow a certain flight path as they look for food and water during the day. Following the cockatoos throughout the suburbs may also reveal locations that the birds use frequently and could be important to the species."

Ms Huelin said the research team hoped to attract keen birdwatchers but anyone was able to participate and the website would include a section that helped identify the bird.

"People don't need to go out of their way to search for the birds but should record observations when the cockatoos happen to be nearby.  It might be while people are at home, on the bus, walking in the park or elsewhere," she said.

Professor Mark Reynolds and Masters student Abdullah Alsubaie from UWA's School of Computer Science and Software Engineering are also part of the team and are keen for the web site to be well used.  According to Professor Reynolds:  "Citizen Science, via the Web, will play an increasingly important role in monitoring environmental changes, and our team wants to develop and trial new techniques for data management, validation and display."

The ‘citizen science' stage of the project will run until August 30.

Observations will be focused on the Perth metropolitan area, although observations outside the area would be welcomed.

The data collected during the UWA project will be sent to Birds Australia for inclusion in a bigger Citizen Science Project that is part of the Australia wide 'Atlas of Living Australia' initiative funded by the federal government (see https://www.ala.org.au/ ).

For further information, or to participate in the research, go to https://cockatoo.csse.uwa.edu.au

Photographer:  Dejan Stojanovic

Media references

Assistant Professor Nicola Mitchell (UWA Animal Biology)  (+61 4) 18 125 046
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716