Lawrie Conole – The ‘difficult’ bird search

Age: 15 plus

$20

A brush with woodland birds

The Newstead district is an Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) with sites identified as being internationally signifiant for the conservation of birds and other biodiversity. It is home to a suite of ‘difficult’ birds – cryptic, declining and often just plan hard to find species that call our local bush home.

Lawrie will introduce you to some of these characters and their habits, including their distinctive songs. It will then be your mission, should you choose to accept it, to venture to a selection of local sites where, armed with some new skills and information, you’ll hopefully encounter some of them such as Speckled Warbler, Chestnut-rumped Heathwren, Painted Button-quail, Spotted Quail-thrush, or even a Crested Bellbird.

Aimed at keen birders with various levels of knowledge and experience, this session will involve a 60 minute introduction, followed by a self-guided 3-hour field session, concluding with  60-minute ‘bird call’ where participants share and discuss their findings.

The search will begin and end at Newstead Arts Hub and include gentle outdoor walking in local birding hotspots, where participants are encouraged to form pairs or trios.

A keen birder/naturalist since childhood in the Geelong area in the late 1960’s, Lawrie worked as an ecologist for decades, and book-ended it with a PhD about urban birds in the early 2000s. The obsession continues, and he is currently exploring the largely undocumented fauna of a state forest between Castlemaine and Daylesford using his own eyes and ears, supplemented with the ‘augmented reality’ of passive sound recorders and trail cameras.

Life with Birds is an immersive celebration of the birds and woodland ecosystems of central Victoria curated by Geoff Park, presented by Newstead Arts Hub in partnership with Castlemaine State Festival.

Life with Bird brings together a distinguished range of collaborators – artists, photographers, sound recordists, field naturalists, scientists and writers. The various events enable participants to enjoy and learn whilst on the path to a deeper appreciation of the richness of our bird life – which is facing many challenges, especially that of global climate change.

The proceeds of this diverse and rich program of events will be dedicated to a community designed citizen science woodland bird conservation project in central Victoria and to the Newstead Arts Hub.