As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday 3 April 2015

'Urgent' crowdfunding campaign hopes to help save three native birds facing extinction in Tasmania

By Johanna Nicholson

Updated about 11 hours ago

An international campaign has begun to help save three native bird species at risk of extinction.

The swift parrot, forty-spotted pardalote and orange-bellied parrot are all Australian native birds under threat from predatory sugar gliders.

The swift parrot breeds in Tasmania during spring and summer, nesting in old trees with hollows.

They migrate to south-eastern Australia during the cooler months, but many are not surviving long enough to make the journey.

Logging in Tasmania has meant the tiny birds share their breeding habitat with sugar gliders.

Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) said the presence of the sugar gliders had been catastrophic for the species survival.

"They are able to get into the nest hollows of the swift parrots and the other hollow nesting birds," said Robert Heinsohn, a conservation biologist at the ANU.

"They get in there and they just wreak havoc and destruction," he said.

There are fears based on current figures the colourful swift parrot could be extinct within 16 years.

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