BIRDS OF COCKLESHELL GULLY RESERVE AND ADJACENT AREAS

WA Museum Records and Supplements | Updated 10 years ago

Introduction: Coastal areas of southern Western Australia offer wide habitat diversity for birds, ranging from oceans, islands, beaches, small lakes, streams, coastal dunes, interdune thickets, heaths and woodlands. However, in only three such areas have the birds been studied in detail and related to habitat. These are the Murchison River area (Sedgwick,1949) and the Swan River district (Alexander, 1921; Serventy, 1948) on the west coast and Cape Le Grand National Park (Dell, 1975) on the south coast.

It is reasonable to suppose that a floristically rich area would h~ve many species of birds. Gardner (1949) has indicated that the Hill River district, in which the present' study is located, is exceedingly rich in plant species, although nothing is known about the total number of species present. The fact that three major botanical districts-Darling, Irwin and Avon-meet here (Gardner and Bennetts, 1956) probably explains the large number of plants present.

There is a pressing need to evaluate the bird assemblage in this area because of possible disturbance from farming and mining. The vertebrate survey of the Cockleshell Gully area (see Chapman, this report) gave us an opportunity to assess the avifauna in the area north of the Hill River. We were fortunate also that Johnstone had commenced a study of seabirds on the Fisherman Islands in 1970 and was able to contribute to this study.