How do you track down a bowerbird when it lives in dense rainforest and mimics the sounds of other native birds?

Dominic Chaplin will tell you it’s no easy task. But he and other ‘birders’ have been at it for over 10 years regardless and they’ve mapped more than 700 bowers – which will be used to measure future climate change in the Wet Tropics.

Bowerbirds as climate change indicators

Golden bowerbirds and tooth-billed bowerbirds are known to return to the same bowers – which are built to attract mates – for years and even decades. So when a Malanda local noticed that some bowers at relatively low elevation levels were no longer being used, it prompted Birdlife Northern Queensland volunteers to begin a follow-up monitoring program. Luckily, more bowers were located close by.

“Golden bowerbirds only live in the Wet Tropics and they breed in upland rainforest, 95 per cent of them between 800 and 1600m,’’ Dominic says. “They’ve been ranked No.2 in a list of species considered the most vulnerable to future climate change in the Wet Tropics because, unlike many other species, they won’t be able to move to higher ground to avoid higher temperatures.”

Dominic and others have been locating and monitoring bowers from Mt Amos near Cooktown to Mt Finnigan south of Townsville, with sites including the top of Queensland’s highest mountain, Mt Bartle Frere.

“About three years ago I was sitting at the top and I heard a little rattling call,’’ he says of the hike up Bartle Frere. “After making my way through the bush, I found a bower and saw a golden bowerbird. This bird would be the last one standing if the full predictions on climate change were to become a reality.”

The surveys have also led Dominic up dense forested slopes including on Mt Pieter Botte in the Daintree, Devil’s Thumb at Mossman, Mt Lewis, Edith and Baldy on the Atherton Tableland and Mt Elliot south of Townsville. He’s pretty much traversed the length and breadth of the Wet Tropics bioregion – with secateurs, binoculars and a high tolerance for mosquitoes, leeches and wait-a-while vine!

Mapping bowers across the Wet Tropics

Dominic and fellow citizen scientists have mapped the bowers of 118 golden bowerbird and 650 tooth-billed bowerbirds. The data is being used in an upcoming revision of the Action Plan for Australian Birds.

He says the bower mapping serves as baseline data. “Both species are still present across all of the known range. The next step is to try and count the numbers within this range. Climate change is happening slowly and steadily. A declining population might vanish from the northern or southern extremes of its range.