Princess found in the desert

They've only been seen a handful of times over the last 100 years.

But one of Australia's rarest birds, the princess parrot, has been sighted in among the spinifex on Newhaven Reserve, about 500 kilometres north west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

Bird enthusiasts from across the country are scrambling to get to Newhaven by any means possible, hoping for a glimpse of the arid-zone bird.

Little is known about the desert-dweller, named in honour of Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who eventually became the Queen of England in 1901.

The parrot, usually about 40 centimetres in length, is nomadic, making it extremely difficult to find and study.

They're understood to inhabit only three main areas: near Ernabella in South Australia, along the ranges west of Alice Springs and in the western desert regions of Western Australia.

Toni Marsh and her partner Peter Struik were camping at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy-run reserve when the parrots were noticed by the property managers two weeks ago.

"We just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

"We were just out here camping for a week and the managers asked if we could stay on a bit to help them in case a lot of people wanted to come out and see the princess parrots.

"Obviously part of our aim is to protect the parrot and collect any information because there's so little known about them."

Ms Marsh says the parrots have been reliably seen at the secret location on Newhaven each morning for the last two weeks.

Numbers have varied from four through to 50 birds flying overhead and perching at one time.

Continued:  http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2012/s3507009.htm

Ducklings signal hope for world’s rarest bird

Madagascar pochard ducklings hatch in captivity

April 2012. The Madagascar pochard - arguably the world's rarest bird - has bred successfully in captivity, building hope that it can be saved from extinction.

18 ducklings
Eighteen precious pochard ducklings are being reared at a specially built centre in Antsohihy, Madagascar, opened last year by Dr Lee Durrell. The birth of the ducklings is a key milestone in the conservation of the species, including an emergency expedition two years ago to take eggs into captivity. It is the ducks from those eggs that have now bred for the first time.

Extinct until 2006
Dr Glyn Young, a conservation biologist with Durrell, has spent much of his life studying the Madagascar pochard. He said: "The ducklings represent an incredible step forward in the fight to save the pochard from extinction. Six years ago, people thought this bird was already extinct and yet the discovery of one small population and now the arrival of these ducklings has led to real hope that the birds can one day flourish again."

The pochard was believed to be extinct until its rediscovery in 2006 on a single small lake, Lake Matsaborimena (or Red Lake), in northern Madagascar. Numbering just 22 birds, the ducks remain extremely vulnerable to extinction from a single event such as pollution or a disease outbreak.

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/madagascar-pochard-2012.html

A brighter future for Europe’s rarest migratory songbird

Aquatic Warbler, the rarest and the only globally threatened passerine bird in mainland Europe, is facing a brighter future thanks to six years of intensive work within a LIFE project (part financed by the European Commission), coordinated by OTOP (BirdLife in Poland). Swarovski Optik, Cemex Poland and the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) kindly agreed to co-finance the other part of the € 5 million project.

“Aquatic Warbler belongs to a very special habitat characterised by peatlands fed by groundwater, called ‘fen mires’. Protecting this bird by restoring its habitat means at the same time to improve the conservation for other rare species that also live in fen mires”, explains Lars Lachmann, the project coordinator working at the same time for OTOP and for the RSPB, also partner in the project.

In the last century, all but a very few fen mires have been drained for agriculture or peat extraction, causing a catastrophic decline in Aquatic Warbler populations, and led to classify them as globally threatened.

A quarter of the global population has survived in Eastern Poland, and a small and isolated group of Aquatic Warbler has found refuge along the Polish-German border.

But today, the vegetation on the few remaining fen mires is changing, and the elements composing the bird habitats are disappearing, and with them, Aquatic Warbler and several breeding waders like Black-tailed Godwit, Common Redshank and Northern Lapwing. Even the establishment of National Parks, has not been able to invert this tendency.

The objective of the project led by OTOP has been to develop a landscape-scale solution for the restoration and the sustainable management of peatlands (fen mires). On the pilotsites, OTOP introduced a prototype mowing machine that does not destroy the delicate peat soil and vegetation. More than 30 of these machines now maintain 15,000 ha of Aquatic Warbler habitat in Poland and this successful technique has already been exported to Germany and Belarus.

OTOP has also implemented suitable agri-environment schemes, paying farmers for Aquatic Warbler friendly management, rehabilitating three national reserves, and supporting the idea that National Parks should lease out their lands needing active management to farmers using the new machines.
Currently, OTOP and its partners are setting up a system to convert the large amounts of low-quality hay harvested on those lands into carbon-neutral biomass briquettes and pellets, permitting to protect the climate, to finance habitat restoration and management for Aquatic Warbler, and at the same time to create local green activities and employments.

“We are very pleased to see the return of large numbers of waders, including Jack Snipe and Wood Sandpiper not seen in Poland for over 10 years, but the key success of this LIFE Project is of course that Aquatic Warbler is readily returning to the areas we have restored for it.” welcomed Lars Lachmann.

The € 5 million project has been implemented with funds from the EU LIFE Nature Programme. Additional co-financing was provided by the RSPB, Swarovski Optik and Cemex Poland.

http://www.birdlife.org/community/2011/12/a-brighter-future-for-europes-rarest-migratory-songbird/