MONITORING PARROT SURVIVAL
Our main goal on Artemis is to recover the population of Golden-shouldered Parrots (GSPs). We want to see more parrots back in the places they were 20 years ago.
Everything we are doing on Artemis relating to habitat restoration, predator control, feral pig control and supplementary feeding is being done to grow the population of GSPs. All combined, it’s a lot of work, costing a lot of money, and there is a lot riding on it. We’ve already lost the closely-related Paradise Parrot to extinction. We don’t want to repeat that horrible mistake with GSPs.
It boils down to survival: we are doing whatever it takes to increase the lifespan of GSPs. And to make sure we’re doing the right things in the right way, we are following the fate of individuals using colour-banding.
Paradise Parrot. Copyright W.T Cooper, with permission.
Parrot banding video. Video curated by Braydon Moloney.
COLOUR BANDING
Colour-banding is a standard practice in ornithology and aviculture. It involves first capturing birds in mist-nets and fitting them with combinations of small coloured leg rings so they are individually recognisable. Understandably, mist netting and banding requires several permits and a licence from state and federal authorities, plus sign-off from an animal ethics committee.
Colour-banded parrots are monitored closely using cameras as they visit supplementary feeding stations. The automatic cameras we are currently using capture all the comings and goings by all species that visit the feeder, resulting in hundreds of thousands of photos.
Technical Officer, Tanya Detto, reviewing camera footage. Photo Credit - Tanya Detto.
Cameras located on Supplementary Feeders capture data. Photo Credit - Conservation Partners.
IMAGE ANALYSIS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Monitoring the survival of colour-banded parrots generates an enormous volume of images. Automatic cameras at supplementary feeding stations capture hundreds of thousands of photographs of birds and other wildlife moving through the area.
To make this dataset manageable, we use artificial intelligence to help sort and filter the images. The AI system identifies photographs that are likely to contain parrots and removes the many images of other species or empty frames. These shortlisted images are then carefully reviewed by our team to identify individual birds based on their colour leg bands.
This combination of automated filtering and manual verification allows us to process very large numbers of photographs efficiently while maintaining scientific accuracy. The monitoring program is coordinated by Tanya Detto, who oversees the review process and ensures the data collected contributes to our understanding of survival rates and population trends in the critically endangered Golden-shouldered Parrot.
A group of volunteers from Queensland Bird Research and Banding Group (QBRBG) visited Artemis in November 2023. Together, we fitted coloured leg bands onto 21 new Golden-shouldered Parrots. The information we get from colour-banding is critically important because it allows us to track how these critically-endangered birds respond to our conservation management actions. Photo Credit to Braydon Moloney.
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