This planting site was just a bare paddock with a couple of lonely trees only 10 years ago. We've planted the missing understorey and now it provides safe cover and foraging habitat for our rarer woodland birds.
This planting site was just a bare paddock with a couple of lonely trees only 10 years ago. We've planted the missing understorey and now it provides safe cover and foraging habitat for our rarer woodland birds.
In dense cover like this, the smaller birds can easily avoid the aggressive Noisy Miners that completely dominate all the more open bush remnants.
Basically it needs to be dense enough you can't see through it.
As the vegetation grows denser, it shades out the grasses and creates patches of bare soil where the natural seed fall can germinate easily.
This thickens up the understorey even more, and so the habitat gets better and better as time goes on.
Another 10 year old planting site with excellent habitat for our rarer woodland birds, both in the understorey shrubs and amongst the leaf litter on the ground. In places like this, the smaller birds can easily hide from the aggressive Noisy Miners, so the Miners eventually give up and move to more open territory that they can defend.
Long term grazing on the other hand, prevents any natural regeneration of the understorey, and therefore keeps the habitat too open for the rarer birds to get established. It's a static "plantation" not a functioning ecosystem.
Similarly, if the planting density is not high enough, the habitat remains too open for years or even decades.
Finally, a reminder of the birds we are talking about. This one is a Hooded Robin, which is now rare in the district.
Another rare regional speciality, the Turquoise Parrot.