Dear friends of the Fairywren Project,
Big news! The Fairywren Project is one year old! Technically we are a little over a year old, but now we have a full year of data extending from August 2018 through August 2019. And you’ve been busy during that time!
We are extremely impressed with these numbers, almost 500 participants and over 4,500 checklists is very encouraging. Here’s the breakdown of how many checklists we have per species:
It should be no surprise to anyone that Superb Fairywrens are far in the lead, as their distribution best overlaps with the most populated areas in Australia. Splendid Fairywrens finally got a boost but our numbers on the other Western Australia Fairywrens (Red-winged and Blue-breasted) are still low. Make sure your WA birder friends know about the Fairywren Project! And as always White-winged Fairywrens are very appreciated too, but they have the benefit of occurring in every state/territory of Australia, so their numbers are a little bit higher. Here is the map of where your sightings are coming from:
It’s wonderful to see some of the interior filling in now! Those arid Purple-backed and White-winged Fairywren checklists are appreciated from you traveling birders! Thank you again to everyone who has participated. We’re really excited to see where this project can go over the next few years and we're especially excited to see how fairywrens continue to respond to changing environmental conditions. As always, we will continue to update you on our findings. We’re currently working in the background to transcribe all of your observations and start to analyze the data. We’re also long over-due for a “Fairywrens in the News” post. There has been some fascinating fairywren research published lately that we’re excited to share with you. We’ll do that soon.
A reminder for your checklists: if you’re trying to submit data to us, don’t forget to include plumage types for the brown birds you see as well as the bright males! Letting us know that at least one of the males you saw was in bright plumage gives us a little bit of information, but we can do much more with data that includes plumage types for all the fairywrens you’re able to get good looks at. Additionally, make sure to use our plumage codes or clearly specify the plumage type when you submit data. For example, 3b, or three bright, or three males in nuptial plumage, is great, but if you just say “three males” then we’re not sure if you mean bright males, intermediate males, or dull males. If you’ve been reporting males as only “males” with no plumage information and you want to get that corrected, reach out to us (fairywrenproject@gmail.com) and we can help do that!
Thank you again! Let us know if you have any questions or fun observations and keep tracking those fairywrens!
Joe and Allison
