A harness trial for radio-tracking threatened birds inhabiting dense vegetation

The 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires resulted in the conservation status listing and uplisting of many species because of the significant loss of species’ habitat, while also highlighting the lack of basic empirical data available for many of our threatened taxa. The Kangaroo Island Western Whipbird Psophodes nigrogularis lashmari and Western Bassian Thrush Zoothera lunulata halmaturina were two such taxa uplisted to Endangered. Both species are extremely cryptic, making monitoring their post-fire recovery particularly difficult. We trialled a small rubber-band backpack harness designed specifically to attach radio-transmitters to ground-foraging species inhabiting dense vegetation to assess its usefulness in future studies. The harness design was very quick and easy to attach in the field, with retention times of c. 14–22 days achieved. The rubber band’s natural ‘weak link’ makes it a useful and simple harness technique in studies where entanglement is a potential issue and short-term deployment is desirable.