In 2012 I met with Nicholas Carlile from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. Nicholas had a major involvement with the feral animal eradication project an Broughton Island, with one of his tasks being to gather baseline data about nesting seabirds so that any future changes can be identified. We talked about doing the same thing for the land birds.
That led to contact with Susanne Callaghan, the NPWS Ranger for Broughton Island. With Suse, we developed a 6-monthly monitoring program (centred around spring and autumn visits) in which representative examples of the various habitats of Broughton Island were surveyed for the birds present. These surveys ran from 2012 to 2016 and allowed us to establish a baseline of data against which future changes can be measured.We've now moved to doing quarterly surveys.
Broughton Island does not have a wide range of types of habitat (and never will) so the number of species there will never be huge. In the 2012-2016 surveys, we found 48 species, with the main ones being Golden-headed Cisticola, Tawny Grassbird, Silvereye and Brown Quail - all of which are widespread. We also discovered that there are lots of Lewin’s Rails around the island – these are secretive birds that we mostly detect from their calls, and only occasionally seeing glimpses of one.
Papers
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Stuart, A., Clarke, T., van Gessel, F., Little, G., Fraser, N. and Richardson, A. (2017). Results from surveys for terrestrial birds on Broughton Island, 2012-2016. The Whistler 11: 46-53
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Little, G., Little, J., Kyte, R. and Stuart, A. (2020). Silvereye subspecies on Broughton Island, New South Wales. Corella 44: 38-43.
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Stuart, A. (2021). Passerines on Broughton Island. The Whistler 15: 45-52.
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Little, G. and Stuart A. (2022). Banding studies on Broughton Island: overview of 2017-2022 results. The Whistler 16: 74-79.
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Stuart, A. and Clarke, T. (2023). The first confirmed modern record for Pycroft’s Petrel in Australia. The Whistler 17: 50-53.
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Stuart, A., Clarke, T. and Callaghan, S. (2023). A five-year study of the use by Gould's Petrel of artificial nest boxes on Broughton Island, New South Wales. The Whistler 17: 75-83.
Talks
All change for Broughton Island (presented at an HBOC meeting, October 2020 and thenat a Birding NSW Central Coast branch meeting in March 2022)
Reports
Stuart, A. (2020). Bird studies on Broughton Island 2017-2020. Hunter Bird Observers Club Special Report #9
Stuart, A. (2014). Broughton Island 2012-2014 report
Stuart, A. (2013). Broughton Island Year 1 report
Poems
Thoughts Based On Three Days Spent Birding on Broughton Island
Media
Story about the Broughton Island bird banding project
Story about the nest boxes and the presence of a Pycroft's Petrel
One of the several stories about the Gould's Petrel chick (you can see others here)
Latest News
In our May 2023 visit, we were accompanied by a writer and a photographer working on a story about Broughton Island for the magazine Australian Geographic.The story appeared in the Sep/Oct issue of the magzine. Of course, it's about more than the birds, but they certainly were well-mentioned.
Some previous news
I proposed a banding study for terrestrial birds and in June 2017 it got underway. In May 2021 we also added a colour-banding project. Greg Little leads the study, assisted by Rob Kyte and Judy Little and the occasional extra body. Our first banding visit was June 2017 with one of the highlights being that we confirmed three sub-species of Silvereye were on the island (cornwalli, westernensis and lateralis).
There was a big surprise waiting for us on our October 2019 visit to the island. In one of the Gould's Petrel nest boxes there was a Pycroft's Petrel! The record was accepted by BARC as the first confirmed record for Australia.
In December 2019 Greg Little and I found a Gould's Petrel sitting on an egg in one of the nest boxes. By the time of our January-February 2020 visit the egg had hatched and there was a healthy chick there, about a week old. It was the first breeding success for those nest boxes. Since then, many additional chicks have fledged.