The avifauna of the Porongurup Range, an isolated habitat in South-western Australia

Abstract

The Porongurup Range, containing an isolated tract of tall open (wet sclerophyll) forest surrounded by open (dry sclerophyll) forest, has an avifauna of about fifty species of which twenty-eight breed. Compared to the surrounding plain, this avifauna is impoverished with some nineteen species absent. Some of these absentees occur in the main block of tall open forest, fifty kilometres south-west. There seems to be no immediately obvious or convincing explanation why most of these absentees are missing from the avifauna of the Porongurup Range.