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).
August 24, 2020
#ISTC20 Twitter conference 7-8 October 2020
The VWSG is continuing its foray into the world of social media by presenting at the first International Shorebird Twitter Conference. The date and time for the VWSG tweets will be confirmed soon, so keep an eye on the website for an update.
August 20, 2020
AGL development proposal in the Western Port Ramsar site
The proposal by AGL to build a floating gas platform at Crib Point, south-east of Hastings in Western Port, has long angered the community of the Mornington Peninsula. This platform is planned to be built within the Ramsar site and is seen to present an unacceptable environmental risk. Mornington Peninsula Council has voted against this proposal. Of course, this does not mean the end of this project, however, this is an important step toward helping protect wader habitat in Western Port bay.
The VWSG will be making a submission in relation to the Environmental Effects Statement for the proposal.
July 28, 2020
#SCBMelb20 Twitter conference update
The link to participate in the conference and interact with the VWSG presentation on Thursday 30th July is now available. You won’t need a Twitter account to interact through this platform.
The Society for Conservation Biology Greater Melbourne Chapter is holding their inaugural Twitter 2020 conference on July 30th and 31st. The VWSG, via our Twitter account @VWSG_web, will be presenting an overview of some key VWSG projects as part of the conference.
The VWSG presentation will be between 15:00 and 15:10 on Thursday 30th July.
If you do not have a Twitter account there are a number of ways to follow the conference tweets. The easiest is to sign up for free account. That way you can interact with the conference presenters. If not, you can only view tweets using the hashtag #SCBMelb20, or if you only want to view the VWSG presentation, use @VWSG_web. The conference organisers are trialling some software that allows non-Twitter users to interact with the conference. Keep an eye on the conference webpage for more details. We will try to post something here too before Thursday.
Mike Weston and his colleagues have recently published a paper in Conservation Genetics about morphological and molecular evidence of population divergence in a widespread shorebird across its southern mainland Australian distribution. See the publications page for more details.