Wingtags allow all of us to identify and learn about individual birds. We encourage everyone who encounters an Ibis with wingtags to report their sighting using the Wingtags app – even if it’s the same bird day after day, we are interested!
This information helps us learn about individual bird’s behaviour and that of the population. For example, one juvenile has moved from Centennial Park to Townsville, North Queensland! While some adults, birds aged as at least 3-years old, have been observed regularly using Sydney parks over the past 12 years – yes, these birds are at least 15-years old.
This research commenced in 2005 when adult Ibis (>3-years) were colour banded at Centennial Park. In 2007 and 2008 additional adults were colour banded at Centennial Park and the Royal Botanic Garden and Hyde Park, Sydney; as noted above, some of these birds are still being resighted with their colour bands. In 2008 the first Ibis were fitted with plastic cattle-ear tags to test this method. Since then several hundred adult and juvenile Ibis have been marked with wingtags at Centennial Park, Royal Botanic Garden, Lake Annan, Spring Farm, Lake Gillawarna, and Sydney Olympic Park.
Initially we used the traditional method of individually colour banding Australian white ibis. The bands are recorded from top left, bottom left, top right, bottom right: Red/Orange/Yellow/Metal. The bird in photo 1 was colour banded at the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney, in Spring 2007, and has regularly been resighted. Please report colour band sightings by email: ibis.sightings@gmail.com.
The Wingtags method is preferred as they are easier to observe and report, in particular wingtags are (generally) visible if an ibis is sitting on a nest or wading through water or vegetation. Please note that the Wingtag colour indicates the location the bird was tagged: yellow = Sydney city, green = Centennial Park, blue = Sydney Olympic Park, and Black = Lake Annan & Spring Farm.
