The Overwintering Project: Westernport and the Wall of Wings!
The duo of Overwintering Project exhibitions, The Overwintering Project: Westernport and the Wall of Wings, will run concurrently at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and Oak Hill Gallery respectively, both on Melbourne’s beautiful Mornington Peninsula.
Both exhibitions begin on Saturday March 6 2021. The Overwintering Project: Westernport focusses on Melbourne’s Westernport Bay as internationally significant migratory shorebird habitat. The exhibition features 20 curated artists, 13 of whom have produced new work in a variety of media inspired by the local Westernport environment. Their work will be shown in conjunction with the Overwintering Project Print Portfolio, a growing collection of 300+ original prints made by artists from Australia and New Zealand in response to the unique nature of their local migratory shorebird habitat.
Only an hour from Melbourne, Westernport is a unique and internationally significant wetland with incredibly rich biodiversity. Westernport’s uniqueness is recognized through its cultural identity as the land of the Bunurong / BoonWurrung people, the traditional custodians of these lands and waters, and its designation as a Ramsar site (or internationally significant wetland), a UN Biosphere and a BirdLife Australia Key Biodiversity Area. It is also party to three international migratory bird agreements, with Japan, the Republic of Korea and China.
December 09, 2020
Ruddy Turnstone wanderings
Maureen Christie and her intrepid team made a catch of Ruddy Turnstones in late October 2020 in which they retrieved 2 geolocators near Carpenter Rocks in South Australia.
The great news from these geolocators is that we have now retrieved six northward migration tracks from turnstone VAZ/ATZ – which had its first geo put on with the assistance of Newbery Park Primary School November 2013.
The second bird YUV has provided 5 northward migration tracks now which is almost as impressive as VAZ/ATZ! The geolocator light data from YUV also shows signs of incubation.
This is a remarkable effort for both the birds and banding team!
These are 2 fascinating and useful results in that they provide more information to assist in our longitudinal studies of an individual’s strategies over sequential years. To have these data for 5 and 6 years from these two birds is a great result. Thanks to the ongoing work of Maureen and the dedicated SE SA team for their efforts.
Juvenile Ruddy Turnstone WVC. Photo Sarah Campbell
November 18, 2020
On the Wings of a Godwit
You are invited to musical meditation to the ends of the earth and back…
Performances: 11am, 1pm, 3pm & 6pm, November 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28 29. Suggested Price: $15, tickets available here Duration: 20mins
‘On the Wings of a Godwit’ is a 20-minute, immersive, online guided meditation of music, birdsong and spoken word that takes the listener on a journey from the continental shores of Australasia to the tundra of Siberia. We invite you, the listener, to become a migratory bird, overwintering between your summer homes, following a flyway path that has been travelled for thousands of years.
Bird migration and colour marking webinar November 21
The Bombay Natural History Society in Mumbai is running a webinar on ‘Bird Migration and Colour Marking -Decoding Tagged Bird Sightings‘. Chris Hassell will be joining other shorebirds researchers to speak on how colour marking has been instrumental in understanding certain aspects of bird ecology and migration. You can find out more about flagging in the Central Asian Flyway and hear how to contribute to global studies on bird migration.
Date and time: Saturday, Nov 21, 2020, 11:30 AM – 01:00 PM, IST
The meeting had a fantastic array of speakers from different parts of the flyway, and a huge amount of new and exciting research and information was shared among participants.
A number of VWSG and AWSG members presented during this conference, about many great findings and achievements. There was also a fabulous plenary from Kate Gorringe-Smith on using art to engage, educate and inspire people about shorebirds.
Michelle Wille provided a excellent plenary speech on viruses in shorebirds. If you didn’t understand viruses before this talk, you would definitely know all about them after hearing this presentation!
Record-breaking Bar-tailed Godwit flight – 3MDR radio interview
Thursday 29th October at 18.00 hrs Melbourne time, Graham Beal will be talking to Adrian Riegen about the recent amazing record-breaking Bar-tailed Godwit flight on radio 3 mdr, 97.1fm and streaming, www.3mdr.com
October 24, 2020
Original Nicholas Day prints for sale
Penny Johns has two Nicolas Day original framed watercolours of Robins, a Pink Robin and a Red-capped Robin. She is offering them to VWSG members for sale. The asking price is $150.00 each. All proceeds will go to the VWSG.
Please contact Penny directly if you are interested.
September 15, 2020
PhD opportunity on waders at Deakin University
There is a PhD scholarship available for a keen and skilled candidate that would like to work on the population dynamics of shorebirds using long-term banding and resighting datasets collected by the Victorian Wader Study Group (VWSG) and Australasian Wader Studies Group (AWSG).
The #LegflagChallenge Photo Contest aims to encourage reporting of sightings of waterbirds in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway that carry leg flags, tags and other types of attachments. The competition runs until November 15. Find out more at https://woobox.com/fm3vhi
Double-banded Pover near Coolart Wetlands, Somers beach, Victoria. Photo courtesty of Nick Bradsworth
September 15, 2020
#ISTC20 International Shorebird Twitter Conference
The program for the International Shorebird Twitter Conference is now online at https://www.bou.org.uk/conference/istc20/. There’s a great list of keynote speakers including our very own Amanda Lilleyman.
The VWSG twitter presention on Wednesday 7th October between 10:30 and 10:40pm AEST DST (actual scheduled time is Thursday 8th October @ 9:30am UTC time).
