Introduction

The avifauna of the Illawarra region has a long and fruitful history. Not long after the first Europeans landed in Botany Bay, exploration of the coast and adjacent plains began to produce new collections of natural history for the museums of the northern hemisphere. For example, the Superb Lyrebird was collected near Bargo in the Southern Highlands in 1798. In the notebooks and diaries of early explorers are many reports of the diversity of birds found in the “gardens of the Illawarra” and type specimens of two land birds were obtained from the Illawarra. In 1803, the British naturalist Robert Brown collected a Wompoo Fruit-Dove from rainforest at Red Point. The bird was subsequently described to science in 1821 by the Dutch ornithologist Coenrad Temminick. Another local bird, the Logrunner, was described by the Portuguese naturalist, Camillo Ranzani, in 1822 from a specimen collected at Mt. Kembla.

In 1839 the great British ornithologist, John Gould, visited Charles Throsby’s residence at Bong Bong and McArthur’s estate at Camden. He also travelled to Berrima and Wollongong and explored the escarpment forests. It was in these forests he collected several more Wompoo’s and later requested his trusted collectors, John Gilbert and Frank Strange, to collect nests of this “numerous pigeon”. The Illawarra was also much frequented by George Bennett, another great naturalist. In 1865, Gould published his monumental Handbook of the Birds of Australia, in which he summarises his observations from the Illawarra.

Another work on Illawarra birds comes from Mrs. McKenzie of Minnamurra House, Jamberoo. Her diary contained a list of birds she observed in this area between 1843-1868, a total of 86 species (Cousins 1960).

During the 1930s and 40s two brothers, Aubery and Arthur Elliott from Cambewarra and Merroo, published a number of papers in the journal Emu. Aubery was tragically killed in a farm accident in 1943, though fortunately he had begun to compile extensive notes on the birds between Berry, Nowra and Kangaroo Valley. Their original notes on the Shoalhaven region have survived the passage of time and are now in the possession of the senior author. Between 1920 and 1940 they recorded 180 species from their area.

In 1948, Ellis McNamara published a paper on the birds of the Illawarra in the Australian Natutalist, totalling 148 species. He also published several papers in Emu. In 1954 the Royal Australian Ornithologists Union held a two week camp at Mt. Kiera Scout Camp. Members travelled far and wide across the Illawarra and the results, along with an appendix of recently observed species and addendum to McNamara’s work, brought the local total to 263. This account was also published in the Emu.

More observations through the late 1950s led to the publication of another paper in the Emu (Sefton & Devitt 1962) updating the Illawarra total to 296. In 1977 Doug Gibson, the founding member of the Illawarra Bird Observers Club (IBOC), published a synthesis of birds found in the County of Camden (Gibson 1977). The total had then reached an impressive 345 species, boosted by Doug’s dedication to seabirds, their ecology and distribution.

Twelve years later IBOC published a second edition of Gibson’s work, revising and updating observations in the County of Camden. The total was then 399 (Gibson 1989). The present text, detailing the distribution and abundance of 413 species, continues our advancement of ornithological knowledge in the Illawarra, Shoalhaven and adjacent tablelands. In writing this book we have notably expanded the region covered to incorporate the northern Shoalhaven region and the work of the Shoalhaven Bird Group (SBG) as well as the enormous amount of published research which has been undertaken in the Illawarra over the past decade.

To date, over 260 scientific papers and environmental reports dealing primarily with birds have been published on the Illawarra and Shoalhaven regions (see bibliography). This book provides a synopsis of that work and introduces maps for the first time, an attempt to illustrate the spatial distribution of our avifauna. Major summary works which have contributed to this knowledge include Brandis et al. (1992) and Paliser (1999) for seabirds; Wood (1985) and Chafer (1989, 1992 & 1997) for shorebirds & waterbirds; Disney (1979), Wood & Simcock (1993) and Wood (1998) for landbirds. These texts have been further enhanced with a number of taxon-specific studies too numerous to list here (see bibliography). Of course, the enormous individual contributions of IBOC and SBG members to their unusual records scheme, which was initiated in 1983, are also incorporated. Without this latter contribution (published monthly in IBOC News), many records of individual species would remain undocumented and a book on the subject would be considerably poorer in its content.

The concept of this book is simple. Primarily it is a comprehensive revision and expansion of TheBirds of the County of Camden (Gibson 1989). To improve our knowledge of where birds occur in the region, we illustrate the spatial distribution of each of 413 species of bird that has been reliably recorded from the region since the 1800s. Each species’ distribution is complimented with a basic text on the species abundance, preferred habitat, season of occurrence and, for species with restricted distributions, locations and dates of their observation. These maps and text can then be used in association with any popular field guide to identify a bird the reader may have observed. Furthermore, the region has been divided into 40 sub-areas that broadly represent major topological zones and Local Government Areas within the region (Chafer et al. 1999). These divisions can also be used to compile lists of birds from a reader’s local area.
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Physical Description of the Region
 
 

The land area of the region described in this web site is approximately 886,000 ha and incorporates the Local Government Areas of Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama, northern Shoalhaven, Wollondilly, Wingecarribee and Camden. The region can be divided into three sub-regions; the Illawarra - the coastal land mass east of the escarpment between Stanwell Park and the Shoalhaven River; the Shoalhaven - the coastal land mass between the Shoalhaven River and Lake Conjola; the tablelands - the land mass west of the coastal escarpment.
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Habitat

There are four main environments found within the region covered by this book: urban/industrial, rural, natural vegetation and oceanic (Chafer et al. 1999). Within each of the environments, many niches exist for birds to reside and describing them in detail is beyond the scope of this work. Nevertheless several distinct habitats are used in describing avian habitats within this book. These are:
 
 

Rainforest	generally tall closed wet forest where the canopy is nearly complete.
Tall Open Forest	densely vegetated tracts where the tallest trees are often over 25m tall.
Open Forest	moderately vegetated tracts where at least some trees exceed 10 meters in height.
Woodland	sparsely treed or containing trees less than 10 meters in height.
Heatland	densely vegetated tract of mainly shrubby species that form a continuous mosaic.
Wetland	lakes, lagoons, dams and estuaries, including reedlands, sedgelands and saltmarshes.
Rural	primarily agricultural land dedicated to the grazing of domesticated herbivores and the growing of cereal crops.
Inshore	the first 7 kilometers of ocean extending east of the coast.
Offshore	an intermediate zone between 7 and 20 kilometers offshore.
Pelagic	the deep ocean beyond the continental shelf, i.e. greater than 20 kilometres offshore

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Distribution

The distribution of each species is illustrated with a map of the region and the 40 sub-areas described Figure 1.

The nomenclature of species reported in this book follows that of Christidis & Boles (1994).

In the total of 413 species that have been recorded in the Illawarra - Shoalhaven since 1839, 62 species (15%) are seabirds which inhabit the coastal waters of this region. A further 24 species (6%) are gulls and terns that primarily inhabit the coastal waters, shoreline and lagoons. Migratory and nomadic shorebirds, 48 species (12%), largely reside along the coastline and the margins of coastal wetlands. Waterbirds (ducks, ibis, herons, cormorants, crakes, etc.) are represented on the regional wetlands by 53 species (13%). Birds of prey include 21 diurnal and 9 nocturnal species (7%). Some 16 species of pigeon (4%) and 22 species of parrot and cockatoo (5%) have been recorded, whilst the 158 species of passerine (38%) found in the region include 24 species of honeyeater and 19 species of foliage-gleaners (thornbills, pardalotes etc.)
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Status

Status is defined herein as being the broad degree of residency each species displays while present in the region;
 

Breeding resident	permanent breeding populations found within the regional boundary, 164 sp.
Nomadic visitor	intermittently occurring species that usually do not breed in the region, 92 sp.
Summer visitor	species that occur primarily between August and April, 90 sp.  (including 20 sp. that usually breed during their stay).
Winter visitor	species that occur primarily between April and September, 37 sp.
Accidental	species that are vagrant and considered well outside their normal distribution, generally with less than 3 observations, 26 sp.
Extirpated	locally extinct, no confirmed records for more than 50 years, 3 sp. (Wompoo Fruit-Dove, Bush Stone-curlew, Magpie Goose).

Abundance

Determining the abundance of a species in a given area is always a difficult process (e.g. Wood 1998). The abundance reported herein is a function of variously published qualitative and quantitative studies conducted by members of the Illawarra Bird Observers Club and Shoalhaven Bird Group since 1980. This data is supplemented with the combined 60+ years of birding experience in the region by the authors. Undoubtedly, some readers will disagree with the status assigned to particular species. It must be remembered that each species occupies particular niches across the landscape. Their relative abundance is a function of local habitat health, total regional habitat distribution, total regional species population and most importantly, the visual accessibility of a species to bird observers.

Two examples of the problems faced with abundance classification are the Silver Gull and Ground Parrot. Silver Gulls are a familiar and obviously common species along the coastal zone. Conversely they are rarely observed on the tablelands and never in forests; thus they are classified as locally common. Ground Parrots have a highly restricted habitat and are a very difficult bird to observe. Despite this, regular surveys at Barren Grounds and around Jervis Bay clearly show the species is reasonably common within its specialist habitat; thus they are classified as locally moderately common. The same rule-based classification process was employed for each species reported herein. It is therefore imperative when considering the abundance rating we provide in this book, to recall that we have considered all the above factors when describing the relative abundance of a species across the regional landscape.

In this work we define abundance classes as;
 

Common	found in many habitats across most of the region in large numbers
Locally common	found in a locally restricted number of habitats across the region in large numbers
Moderately common	present in small numbers in preferred habitat(s) throughout the region
Locally moderately common	present in small numbers in locally restricted habitats throughout the region
Uncommon	present in restricted habitats, with a regional population usually below 1,000 individuals
Scarce	present in restricted habitats, with a regional population below 200 individuals
Rare	less than 3 locations/observations reported per calendar year
Accidental	one to few observations this century of a species well outside of its normal distribution
Exirpated	regionally extinct, no confirmed observations for the past 50 years

Of the 413 species of bird reported in this book, 26% are considered rare with less than 3 recorded locations per annum. Uncommon, scarce and accidental species account for a further 35%, moderately common species account for 20%, while only 17% of birds are considered common (Chafer et al. 1999). To understand how this distribution is spread across the avifauna of the region, we illustrate graphically the distribution of various functional groups (Chafer et al. 1999).

From this breakdown we can see that half the number of rare species comes from the seabirds, gulls, terns and shorebirds groups (54 species), though bush birds add another 21 species. Indeed within seabirds, only 15 species (24%) are considered common or moderately common, whilst in shorebirds, only 10 species (21%) are considered to be within the more common categories. This preponderance of rare species is also representative of most of the other nine functional groups illustrated in Figure 5, hovering around the 20-25% mark.

Conservation

Broadly speaking the region contains 597,000 ha of land which is naturally vegetated (68%), 240,000 ha that is cleared or primarily rural in land use (27%), 18,000 ha is urban landscape (2%) and 25,000 ha (3%) which form enclosed waterbodies (Figure 2).

Conservation of valuable environments is today an accepted way of preserving biodiversity. Approximately 400,000 hectares (45%) of the region are conserved within some form of conservation reserve. This reserve system includes water supply catchments, national parks, nature reserves, State recreation areas, State forests and Council reserves.

These conservation reserves and the water supply catchments provide a large area of relatively natural bushland which encompass examples of many of the region’s unique habitats (Table 1). Unfortunately the same cannot be said for wetlands, especially along the coastal zone where significant areas of wetland have in the past been reclaimed for recreational and industrial landuse (see Chafer 1997).

In 1995 the Threatened Species Conservation Act came into force in New South Wales. Within this Act, a number of bird species were listed on Schedule 1, Endangered Fauna, and Schedule 2, Vulnerable Fauna. Species are listed under Schedule 1 if, in the opinion of the Act’s Scientific Committee, it is in danger of becoming extinct in NSW, its total population has been reduced to critical levels, or its habitat has been drastically reduced. Species are listed under Schedule 2 if, in the opinion of the Scientific Committee, the species is likely to become endangered unless circumstances and factors threatening its survival or evolutionary development cease to operate (Anon. 1995).

Species that have been recorded from within the region covered by this book and listed under the above schedules as of February 1999 are:

Schedule 1. Endangered Species

Goulds Petrel, Black-necked Stork, Bush Stone-curlew, Beach Stone-curlew, Hooded Plover, Little Tern, Eastern Bristlebird, Regent Honeyeater.

Schedule 2. Vulnerable Species

Wandering Albatross, Black-browed Albatross, Shy Albatross, Providence Petrel, Kermadec Petrel, Black-winged Petrel, White-bellied Storm-Petrel, Flesh-footed Shearwater, Little Shearwater, Red-tailed Tropicbird, Australasian Bittern, Black Bittern, Square-tailed Kite, Osprey, Magpie Goose, Blue-billed Duck, Freckled Duck, Brolga, Sanderling, Great Knot, Greater Sand-Plover, Lesser Sand-Plover, Sooty Oystercatcher, Pied Oystercatcher, Comb-crested Jacana, Painted Snipe, Broad-billed Sandpiper, Black-tailed Godwit, Terek Sandpiper, White Tern, Grey Ternlet, Sooty Tern, Wompoo Fruit-Dove, Rose-crowned Fruit-Dove, Superb Fruit-Dove, Glossy Black-Cockatoo, Swift Parrot, Turquoise, Ground Parrot, Superb Parrot, Powerful Owl, Sooty Owl, Masked Owl, Barking Owl, Olive Whistler, Pink Robin and Striated Fieldwren.
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