By Derek Schlennstedt
While they may be difficult to spot, the helmeted honeyeater population is thriving.
In a report by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP), 62 helmeted honeyeaters were bred in the wild during the 2016-’17 breeding season.
With a wild population of just under 200 birds, a boom is a relative concept.
However, this is the highest number of helmeted honeyeaters in the wild since the recovery program began in 1989.
Senior ornithologist at DELWP, Bruce Quin, is thrilled with the results, nonetheless.
“This is such fantastic news and is the second-highest number of fledglings we’ve had from a breeding season since the recovery program began 27 years ago,” Mr Quin said.
“The past three years have resulted in very successful breeding seasons and is in part due to the work that has gone into the revegetation of different sites within the Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve.”
That revegetation is helped by the volunteer group, Friends of the Helmeted Honeyeater, who produce 100,000 tonnes of plants for revegetation purposes every year.
This vegetation is vital to the helmeted honeyeater population, who use the foliage for roosting and nesting.
Bob Anderson, President of Helmeted Honeyeaters said such numbers wouldn’t exist without the revegetation program.
“It gets the birds moving into areas that have been revegetated in recent years which is extremely important,” he said.“They like eucalypts and tea tree foliage and require a dense upper and mid-storey for them to roost and nest in.”
Over the next few weeks, Mr Quin and volunteers from Friends of the Helmeted Honeyeater will be recording of every new bird in the Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve.
Each bird will be given a unique colour-band combination and its DNA will be sampled by performing a blood prick test.
“This is a laborious task that takes hours of time waiting, while you battle mosquitoes and leeches, and wait for the helmeted honeyeaters to enter the feeding stations,” Mr Quin said.
“But, it’s a waiting game worth playing … these records are used to monitor the size and genetic composition of the helmeted honeyeater population.
“We’re quite excited about the population rise but we also understand there is still a lot of work to be done.”
