Read on Twitter
1/11: Brief thread about our new paper on orange-bellied #parrots and #fire https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/emr.12421
2/11: In 2017 the Tasmanian National Parks Service and DPIPWE implemented proactive ecological burns to see if they could promote food growth for parrots
3/11: We used the opportunity to test what would happen to food plant abundance in burned (treatment) and unburnt (control) areas which were conveniently on opposite sides of the south coast track
4/11: We monitored 4 food plants of parrots over 2y and counted how many plants were in treatment and control areas, and whether they flowered/seeded
5/11: We found that lemon-scented boronias came back about 2y after fire, and formed tiny tufts of easy access food for parrots (better than the big shrubs they form in unburnt habitat)
6/11: Tiny flannel flowers came back 1y after fire, and by 2y some had started producing flowers/seed (none of the unburned ones flowered)
7/11: Flat cord rush hasn’t come back yet in the burned habitat, but there were seeding plants in the control areas every year
8/11: Dwarf everlasting daisies came back with vengeance 2y after fire making carpets of white daisies in the burned area, but in the unburnt habitat they were uncommon and barely flowered
9/11: Most of the parrots alive today have never seen burned habitat in the breeding ground but they quickly figured out it was a good food source, and feasted on the abundant dwarf everlasting daisies
10/11: Even more exciting was evidence that the parrots fed daisy seed to their kids (which are visible through the thin skin on their crops as tiny seeds compared to the big grains of Millet in the supplementary food the Gvt feeds them
