World Wetlands Day Celebration - Cattana Wetlands

HIDETOSHI KUDO (MIKEY)

Cairns Area Coordinator, BirdLife Northern Queensland

The World Wetlands Day is an international day to celebrate our wetlands and raise awareness of the important value they have for our environment and communities.

The Ramsar Convention, for wetland conservation, was adopted in 1971 by seven countries with importance emphasised on 2 February. Australia was one of the seven that took a huge step forward to protect our wetland environments with over 170 countries now registered for the Convention.

In Queensland, there are only five sites that have been registered under the Convention. Although there are none in Far North Queensland, despite the rich nature of the Wet Tropics, we continue to celebrate our local Cattana Wetlands in Cairns. The beautiful wetlands were artificially created and have been looked after by the Council and many volunteers. In recent years, there has been a increase in birds nesting.

Ambitiously, Green Space Our Place Jabiru volunteer Geoff McClure and I organised the celebration on Saturday 4 February, the middle of the wet season with huge support from Cairns Birders. Needless to say, lots of mosquitoes were also excited about the celebration.

Jabiru volunteer Denis Moeser was another leader at the event. Denis has installed a number of nest boxes for Sugar Gliders and Striped Possums, as well as for microbats. He also installed some unique insect shelters around the park facilities. Unfortunatley, the introduced Asian Honey Bees are one of the challenges, taking over the nest boxes and driving out the Sugar Gliders.

Dave Anderson, of Cairns Birders and also a Jabiru volunteer, supported the event by describing the bird species around the Cattana Wetlands. We heard Fig Parrots, Channel-billed Cuckoo, Spangled Drongos, Jacanas and Bush-Hens. It was a great morning with like-minded people who are concerned about our environment. I would like to send a big thank you to all participants and the leaders who guided through the wetlands. I would also like to add that the Cairns Reginal Council acknowledges this event and hope BirdLife can receive everyone’s continued support in the future.

DID YOU KNOW...?

If you want to know birds better, a good way is to look closely at them. You can tell a lot about a bird and how it lives from looking closely at it with binoculars. Food is crucial for survival, and many birds have distinctive bill shapes that enable them to get their share in a complex, highly competitive world.

A long bill is better for probing soil, mud or cracks between rocks and plant roots, to find prey that other birds with shorter bills can’t reach. Shorebirds such as Bar-tailed Godwit, Whimbrel and Eastern Curlew, have long, probing bills.

A long, thin bill can get into nectaries in flowers, and ‘tweezer’-like bills are good for picking up and holding insects. Strong, stubby bills are good for cracking open shells to extract the inner nut or seed, eg finches. Longish, heavy, sharp bills are good for catching fish - terns get their lunch by diving into water to catch fish.

Long, sharp bills are good for spearing fish – have a close look at a darter. Did you know darters catch their fish then come to the surface to swallow it. They often throw the fish up into the air manipulating it so they can swallow it head first – can you guess why?

It is because of the fish’s scales which could get stuck in the bird’s throat if swallowed the wrong way!