This page is your map. Each entry is a doorway, a paper, a number, a question worth pressing on. The substance lives in conversation with Gazza.
Doc 7. FID and Disturbance Science
Field Practice Pathway · ~30 min read
Flight-Initiation Distance is the closest measure we have of disturbance impact. The numbers a Steward carries are not opinions: dog 200m, human 75m, drone 150–200m. They come from a body of literature led by Weston et al. and others.
Dog 200m · human 75m · drone 150–200m, buffers drawn from FID data on Australian beach-nesting and roosting shorebirds. Smaller buffers reliably flush birds; larger ones are wasted.
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Doc 9. Writing a Site Report
Field Practice Pathway · ~20 min read
Site visits produce ShorelineWatch records, on a roosting tide or a feeding tide. A site under your stewardship over a season produces a site report, long-form, evidence-based, the document you'd hand a council planner or a partner organisation.
The site report is the long-form companion to the RMDP, a dated, signed, bird-first management recommendation rests on the report's evidence.
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Weston, McLeod, Blumstein & Guay (2012)
A review of flight-initiation distances and their application · Pacific Conservation Biology 18(3)
The review that consolidated FID science for Australian beach-nesting and roosting shorebirds. The numbers in Doc 7, and on the FID Buffer Field Card, descend directly from this paper.
FID varies sharply with stimulus type: dogs trigger flight at much greater distances than humans; drones from above behave differently again. One number doesn't fit all approaches.
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Rogers, Piersma & Hassell (2006)
Roost availability may constrain shorebird distribution · Biological Conservation 133(2)
The paper that quantified roost-loss energetics. Disturbance is a metabolic tax on the roost, beyond the immediate irritation. Each flush burns reserves the bird is at the bay specifically to bank.
The energetic cost of disturbance is real and measurable. Habitual disturbance can shift species distribution at the bay scale, birds simply stop using sites where they cannot rest.
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The feeding tide: foraging ecology on Moreton Bay
Field Practice Pathway · ~15 min read · companion to roost-tide observation
Roosts get the photographs and the protective rules. Feeding flats get the calories. Both halves of the cycle are equally a Steward's visit. A bird that cannot feed cannot fuel the next leg, no matter how peaceful its roost.
Bar-tailed Godwits at Moreton Bay need to bank roughly 4 grams of fat per day across the southern season to fuel northbound migration. That budget is met entirely on the feeding flats at low tide. Feeding-tide disturbance is as costly as roost disturbance, and is currently far less monitored.
What to record on a feeding tide: species spread across the flats, foraging behaviour (probing, picking, gleaning), flock dispersion, prey type if visible, vehicles or dogs on the exposed mud, water-edge dynamics. ShorelineWatch fields handle this without modification.
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Jackson et al., the artificial-habitats trilogy (2020, 2021, 2024)
Three papers on shorebird use of human-made habitats in Australia and across the EAAF
Migratory shorebirds in Australia now make heavy use of human-made habitats: saltworks, sewage ponds, sandy spoil heaps, constructed roosts. Three Jackson-led papers map the extent, the flyway pattern, and the fine-scale habitat selection.
Artificial habitats are now widespread in EAAF migratory shorebird use, not exceptional, not edge cases. Designed correctly, they buffer some natural-habitat loss; designed poorly, they fail. Implications for sites like Kakadu Beach are direct.
Source: 2021 (Australia-wide use) · 2024 (fine-scale habitat selection) · 2020 (flyway-wide policy implications)
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Lilleyman, Coleman, Bush et al. (2024)
Shorebird habitat use and coastal planning · Australia
The paper sitting at the intersection of shorebird ecology and Australian planning law. How coastal development decisions get made, and where the science does, and does not, get incorporated.
The gap between ecological evidence and planning outcomes is the policy story the paper documents. Stewards writing site reports are filling part of that gap.
Source: Search Lilleyman et al. (2024) coastal planning shorebird habitat.
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