'The tracking of Judith'   profiles a young female cassowary establishing its territory in the fragmented landscape of its essential habitat at Mission Beach. 

It was made possible by the community sharing information  which is being used to help protect the cassowary in our region. It helps identify individual cassowaries, their movement in the landscape, where they cross roads etc. 

Check out 'Judith's  story and lots of other information about the cassowaries and the identification  project. 

Thank you everyone for your contributions that make this  project possible.  More here.

On  Friday (15 Nov) Mission Beach Cassowaries (MBC ) attended part of a Cassowary road crossing trials field trip to discuss potential solutions to reduce cassowary deaths at locations where regular road deaths have been documented.

Present were representatives of CCRC, JCU, WTMA, Terrain and MBC.

'Joov' and 'Cyril'(ina) have got together as a cassowary couple this season. It is a big story because 'Cyril' is a four year old female who, it seems, has replaced a very aged bird, 'Barbara', well known to the  Bingil Bay/Garners Beach  community.
'Barbara' is one of Mrs Freda Jorrisen's birds. That means she is almost 50 years old. 

'Barbara' has been the mate of 'Joov' for the last three years and Joov, this year, as an 8 year old, has for the first time successfully raised a chick. (Larry)

Hello from Coquette Point,

On Thursday the Cassowary Coast Regional Council, CCRC, approved the reconfiguration of the Metricon marina development at 65 Coquette Point Road. This 89.26ha marina development abuts Ninds Creek, on the east and fronts the Johnstone River to the north. It is part of the old Ninds Creek Wetlands and as such the soils are acid sulphate. The site was cleared 100 years ago for agricultural and cattle farming purposes.

Hello from Jungguy country,

Coastal wetlands are some of the most threatened habitats on the planet. The Melaleuca leucadendren swamps of Coquette Point are included in the World Heritage Wet Tropics and extended from the mouth of the Johnstone River to the Moresby Range, an area three kilometres long by ½ kilometre wide.

This swamp is a major fish spawning habitat and consists of large deep lagoons and shallow swamps of melaleuca, pandanus and tidal mangrove: this is the Johnstone River’s ‘everglades’.

Dr's Steve and Miriam Goosem were guest speakers at a recent C4 general meeting.  Steve presented a fascinating power point presentation about cassowaries that took us as far back as the 1670's with a Cassowary painting by Francis Barlow in the Entrance Hall at Clandon Park, Surrey. (photo left)

Steve, who is the principle scientist at Wet Tropics Management Authority, kindly sent me the presentation (with his notes) to share with you. Here is Steve's power point presentation

Dr Miriam Goosem who is the Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science (TESS)at JCU, introduced the JCU Traffic management research report of which she is co-author.

Hello from windy and wet Coquette Point,

What a difference a week makes! From warm balmy days under cloudless skies the weather has turned into windy, wet misery. Or at least miserable for sun lovers like me.

The strong wind warning sent Martin in the ‘Sig’ running for port and he came in Monday night and is  now waiting for the wind to ease.

Hello from Coquette Point,

At long last Cassowary matriarch ‘Jessie’ has succumbed to the wooing of ‘Snout’.  For the last six weeks ‘Snout’ has been displaying and preening his feathers, vocalizing with low, low drumming  sounds while doing his best to approach ‘Jessie’. Until Monday his attentions had been rejected and  always ended with an aggressive chase.