Craig & Chapman: Avian drought refugia 
the arid-zone of Australia, a long-term monitoring project 
is needed to assess the abundance of birds in all habitats 
within a landscape and observe how abundance varies 
when drought periods occur. As far as we are aware, no 
study of the arid-zone of Australia has yet been 
conducted over a wide enough range of habitats for a 
sufficiently long time period to unequivocally identify 
drought refugia. As our study only used data from a dry 
period, it cannot provide unequivocal evidence of avian 
drought refugia. However, the patterns we observed 
strongly suggest that areas of groving and creekline 
mulga act as drought refugia for resident arid-zone birds, 
so there should be a strong focus in arid-zone 
management to conserve areas of groving and creekline 
mulga unless a more comprehensive study refutes our 
findings. 
Acknowledgements: Wo would like to thank Hugh Pringle, Peter Hennig, 
Chang Sha Fang, Ray Cranfield and Rob Thomas for their assistance in 
the field. Financial support for this project was provided by the 
Department of Agriculture and the Department of Conservation and 
Land Management. 
References 
Abacus Concepts 1993 SuperANOVA vl.ll. Abacus Concepts 
Inc., Berkeley. 
Biological Survey Committee 1984 The Biological Survey of the 
Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Part 1. Introduction 
and Methods. Records of the Western Australian Museum. 
Supplement 18,1-19. 
Blakers M, Davies SJJF & Reilly PN 1984 The Atlas of Australian 
Birds. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. 
Boorman SA & Levitt PR 1973 Group selection on the boundary 
of a stable population. Theoretical Population Biology 4: 85- 
128. 
Cody ML 1994 Mulga bird communities. 1. Species composition 
and predictability across Australia. Australian Journal of 
Ecology 19: 206-219. 
Davies SJJF 1986 A biology of the desert fringe: Presidential 
Address - 1984. Journal of the Royal Society of Western 
Australia 68: 37-50. 
Greene RSB 1992 Soil physical properties of three geomorphic 
zones in a semi-arid mulga woodland. Australian Journal of 
Soil Research 30: 55-70. 
Hall NJ, McKenzie NL & Keighery GJ 1994 The Biological Survey 
of the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Part 10. 
Sandstone-Sir Samuel and Laverton-Leonora Study Areas. 
Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 47. 
Hanski I 1982 Dynamics of regional distribution. The core and 
satellite species hypothesis. Oikos 38: 210-221. 
Harrison S 1991 Local extinction in a metapopulation context: 
An empirical evaluation. Biological Journal of the Linnaean 
Society 42: 73-88. 
Higgins PJ 1999 Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and 
Antarctic Birds. Volume 4: Parrots to Dollarbird. Oxford 
University Press, South Melbourne. 
Higgins PJ, Peter JM & Steele WK 2001 Handbook of Australian, 
New Zealand and Antarctic Birds. Volume 5: Tyrant- 
flycatchers to Chats. Oxford University Press, South 
Melbourne. 
Ludwig JA, Tongway DJ & Marsden SG 1994 A flow-filter model 
for simulating the conservation of limited resources in 
spatially heterogeneous semi-arid landscapes. Pacific 
Conservation Biology 1: 209-213. 
Moriartv TK 1972 Birds of Wanjarri, WA (27°25'S, 120°40'E). 
Emu 72:1-7. 
Morton SR 1990 The impact of European settlement on the 
vertebrate animals of arid Australia: A conceptual model. 
Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia 16: 201-213. 
Noble JC, Whitford WG & Kaliszweski M 1996 Soil and litter 
microarthropod populations from two contrasting ecosystems 
in semi-arid eastern Australia. Journal of Arid Environments 
32: 329-346. 
Pringle HJR 1995 Pastoralism, nature conservation and ecological 
sustainability in Western Australiafs southern shrubland 
rangelands. International Journal of Sustainable Development 
and World Ecology 2: 26-44. 
Recher HR 1999 The state of Australiais avifauna: a personal 
opinion and prediction for the new millennium. Australian 
Zoologist 31:11-27. 
Recher HR & Davis WE Jr 1997 Foraging ecology of a mulga 
community. Wildlife Research 24:27-43. 
Recher HF & Lim L 1990 A review of the current ideas of the 
extinction, conservation and management of Australiafs 
terrestrial vertebrate fauna. Proceedings of the Ecological 
Society of Australia 16: 287-301. 
Smith PJ, Pressey RL & Smith JE 1994 Birds of particular 
conservation concern in the western division of New South 
Wales. Biological Conservation 69: 315-338. 
Stafford-Smith DM & Morton SR 1990 A framework for the 
ecology of arid Australia, lournal of Arid Environments 18: 
255-278. 
Thackway R & Cresswell ID 1995 An Interim Biogeographic 
Regionalisation for Australia: A Framework for Establishing 
Priorities in the National System of Reserves. Australian 
Nature Conservation Agency, Canberra. 
Tongway DJ 1990 Soil and landscape processes in the restoration 
of rangelands. Australian Rangelands Journal 12: 54-57. 
Tongway DJ & Ludwig JA 1990 Vegetation and soil patterning 
in semi-arid mulga lands of eastern Australia. Australian 
Journal of Ecology 15: 23-34. 
Whitford WG, Ludwig JA & Noble JC 1992 The importance of 
termites in semi-arid ecosystems in south-eastern Australia. 
Journal of Arid Environments 22: 87-92. 
137 
