Which Glossy is that and what is she eating? Flossies and feed trees

Learn how to identify a female glossy black-cockatoo and propagate their favourite food.

Glossies in the Mist is a project that focuses on habitat conservation for glossy black-cockatoos (GBC) in the Great Western Wildlife Corridor (GWWC) – an area between the Blue Mountains and Bungonia. The smallest of the 5 black-cockatoos in Australia, the GBC has a large bulbous bill adapted for processing cones and seeds of she-oaks. Glossies feed almost entirely on the seeds of she-oaks and in the GWWC this is restricted to 2 species of allocasuarina; Black Sheoak and Drooping Sheoak. Glossies are often detected by the clicking of their bills as they feed, and the carpet of she-oak cones (chewings) beneath favoured food trees. Across NSW, GBC are declining due to the reduction of suitable feeding habitat and the loss of large hollow bearing trees for breeding habitat. The Glossies in the Mist project aims to secure the local glossy black-cockatoo population by maintaining critical landscape connectivity. Local landholders are receiving she-oak tubestock for revegetation and incentives to retain existing stands of she-oak and hollow bearing trees on their properties.

To raise the conservation profile of threatened GBCs, the Glossies in the Mist project provided identification training to the Southern Highlands community and invited citizen scientists to submit sightings of GBCs. Glossies in the Mist teamed up with community champions to co-create a photo identification project focusing on cataloguing individual female GBCs using their plumage patterns. This data examines species dynamics and distribution whilst providing an interesting way for the broader community to get involved with GBC conservation. One of the glassy gang, Erna Llenore, will talk about the Flossy project and how it feels to build a momentum in a community achieving amazing outcomes for threatened species.

The Feed the Birds revegetation project is an extension of the existing Glossies in the Mist project. The aim is to combat the habitat loss and degradation of GBC food sources across the Southern Highlands, particularly after the devastating 2019/20 black summer bushfires. This project aims to restore and enhance habitat for GBCs by planting key Allocasuarina (Sheoak) feeding resources and Eucalypt trees for future potential hollows, as well as a variety of understory species.

In this webinar you’ll also hear from Lloyd Hedges on how the Menai Wildflower group propagate and donate the Allocasuarina that is planted in the Glossies in the Mist project. Contacts within the National Parks and Wildlife service resulted in growing plants for the Georges River National Park, the Royal National Park coastal track, Dharawal National Park and 5 Islands National Park and now the Glossies in the Mist project. Lloyd’s fascination with smoke and the flannels resulted in him collecting the seed of the Pink Flannel Actinotus forsythii and running propagation trials thus bringing the Pink into nurseries. You’ll learn how to grow your own Allocasuarina!