The cards a Steward keeps with them. FSB-authored quick-references designed for the field bag — being prepared as the program develops. The external essentials are linked and current: BirdLife's ID booklet, AWSG's leg-flag chart, the BoM tide tables, the Birdata count history.
These are the cards Stewards have asked for over the course of the program. Each is being designed to print clean on standard paper and fold into a field bag without losing legibility. Released as the artwork is completed; subscribed Stewards are notified by email.
Per-roost reference card showing the high-water window, working-tide thresholds and recommended arrival/departure times for major Moreton Bay roosts (Kakadu Beach, Cabbage Tree Creek, Manly Boat Harbour, Toorbul, Wynnum). Designed to fold into a field-bag pocket alongside the BoM tide chart.
Single-page reference for the published FSB buffers — dog 200 m, human 75 m, drone 150–200 m — with the FID science compressed onto the back (the four-distance framework, body-mass scaling, and the species the bay's flock is most sensitive for). Designed for the field bag, not for the wall.
A one-page taxonomy of the disturbance categories captured in ShorelineWatch and FlagWatch — what each category means, the operational threshold, and the corresponding bird response. Useful before a field trip and as a tear-out for working with new Stewards.
Labelled diagram of a shorebird's external anatomy at field-relevant scale. Bill, lores, eyebrow, breast, belly, flanks, leg colour, wing pattern. The vocabulary a Steward needs when reading the BirdLife ID Booklet alongside live birds at the roost.
Pre-trip, on-site and post-trip checklist for a Steward visiting a roost. Tide reference, equipment, count protocol cues, ShorelineWatch/FlagWatch submission reminders, and the post-visit notes that feed the site report.
One pocket card per flagship migrant — Bar-tailed Godwit, Eastern Curlew, Great Knot, Red Knot, Whimbrel. Identification, conservation status, ecology in 30 seconds. Designed to stack with the BirdLife ID Booklet for the species a Steward sees most often.
Six external resources — the published BirdLife ID booklet, the AWSG leg-flag chart, the flag-reading database, the official tide tables, the national count portal, and the EAAF flyway site directory. These are the references the program rests on alongside its own materials.
The standard Australian shorebird identification booklet. 28 pages, all migratory and resident species grouped by similarity, with ID points, size, habitat and EPBC status. Free to download; print copies available from the BirdLife shorebirds team.
The flag colour and position code for every banding country and site on the EAAF. Critical for any Steward reading flags at Moreton Bay — a black flag on the right tibia means an Alaskan-banded bird; a green over white on the left tibia means New South Wales. The chart is the decoder key for everything FlagWatch records.
The reporting interface for flag reads from individual birds across the EAAF. A Steward who reads a flag at a roost reports it here (or via FlagWatch, which feeds the same database). The portal also lets you look up the resighting history of any individual bird.
Free daily tide predictions for Brisbane Bar (the bay's reference station), Cleveland (mid-bay), Bongaree (Bribie Island, Kakadu Beach reference), Tangalooma and Jacobs Well. Heights in metres, times in AEST. The official source for any tide reference in a site report.
The public-facing layer of the Australian Shorebird Monitoring Project dataset. Look up the count history of any Moreton Bay site over the past three decades. Useful for site reports, briefing notes and any conversation that benefits from a baseline number.
The directory of internationally-recognised flyway sites — ~150 sites across 22 countries, each with a flyway-network registration including site description, population thresholds, and management status. Moreton Bay is registered Site EAAF021. Useful for understanding the formal status of the bay's roosts in the international framework.
He's read every constellation. He'll give you the short version, the deeper version, or the next reading — whatever you need.