Stay safe little pinkies

If these little pinkies stay at the Western Treatment Plant for the next three months they should be safe from duck shooters.

Pink-eared Duck – (Malacorhynchus membranaceus)
1/2500, f/5.6, ISO 800

Pink-eared Ducks are tiny with strikingly beautiful plumage. They get their name from the bright pink patch behind their eyes. They could also be called square-billed ducks, or flappy-billed ducks, or stripy ducks, or eye-patch ducks – I think it’s a good thing that I have never had a role deciding on bird names but wouldn’t it be a great activity for children. Next time I take a group of children bird watching I’ll make sure to ask them what they’d call the various species we see.

The Victorian duck shooting season starts tomorrow morning. Following last year’s horrendous massacre of ducks the starting time for tomorrow’s shoot has been delayed until 9am, the shooters aren’t happy but at least it will be light enough for them to have some idea what they’re shooting at.

Several wetlands have been closed to hunting due to large numbers of Freckled Duck, Blue-billed Duck, Brolga and Orange-bellied Parrots. Bizarrely though, the government has not closed the Heart Morass wetlands in Gippsland despite the Department of Defence warning that the area has been contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl which renders duck meat and livers unfit for human consumption. Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority have issued notices that anglers and shooters should not eat any fish or ducks from the area. And yet the government has refused to close these wetlands to shooters, despite introducing rules that shooters have to at least take the breast meat from native birds they shoot.

To complicate this even further, ducks fly. They could end up almost 200 km from Heart Morass in just one day; they could end up anywhere in the state during the season. So shooters are permitted to shoot native waterbirds, and the new rules insist that they don’t ‘waste’ any birds, while other departments are warning them not eat what they shoot.

The above information has been put together by a duck rescuer, someone who cares passionately about our native waterbirds and who spends many weekends in the wetlands rescuing injured birds. Won’t it be wonderful when we no longer need rescuers? I’m hoping that Victoria is about to join other states and permanently ban duck shooting.

I’m thinking of all the birds out there who won’t understand what is happening to them, and I’m thinking of all the rescuers (including my inspiring daughter and her friends), vets and wildlife carers – you are all awesome.

And so are all you birders who have helped spread the word about the realities of the shooting season, thank you all for caring.

Happy birding

Kim

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