Australian Bird Count facts for kids
The Australian Bird Count (ABC) was a big project by a group called the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU). This project helped scientists learn more about where Australian birds live and how they move around the country.
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The Australian Bird Count: Counting Our Feathered Friends
Before the Australian Bird Count, the RAOU had a successful project called the Atlas of Australian Birds. It created a book in 1984 that showed where different Australian birds were found. After that, a bird expert named Ken Rogers suggested that the RAOU should study how birds move around Australia, especially bird migration.
How the Project Worked
The RAOU team worked out how to run this new project using volunteers. They did some test studies and held a meeting to plan how to "Monitor the Populations and Movements of Australian Birds."
Stephen Ambrose was chosen to manage the project. The fieldwork, which is when people went out to count birds, started in January 1989 and finished in August 1995.
- About 950 volunteers helped with the project.
- They completed 79,000 surveys.
- Each survey lasted for a fixed 20-minute period.
- These surveys took place in 1700 different locations across Australia.
- Each location was about three hectares in size.
Where the Project Was Based and Who Helped
The project management first started at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Later, it moved to the RAOU National Office in Melbourne.
The project received financial help from different groups:
- First, the Australian Nature Conservation Agency provided support.
- Later, BP Australia gave A$260,000 to the project over five years. This money was very important for the project to continue.
What We Learned
Even though a lot of the information from the project still needs to be fully studied, scientists have already learned some important things. They found out that several bird species make big seasonal movements. This means birds move to different areas during different seasons. The project helped show these movements by looking at where birds were most common at different times of the year.
A report about some of the project's findings was published in 1999. It was included as an extra part of the RAOU's magazine, Wingspan.
