More blue wren sightings in Glebe!

By Judy Christie and Andrew Wood, May 2026 from Bulletin 03/2026

Judy Christie, organiser of the Society’s annual spring bird survey and leader of the Orphan School Creek bushcare volunteers, reported on the 29 March: ‘This afternoon about 4 pm on a lovely sunny afternoon I saw a male and female Superb Fairy-wren in the Federal Park mangroves in Rozelle Bay. They were there for some time then flew west to a patch of lantana and presumably moved around the foreshore of Rozelle Bay towards the wetlands of Rozelle Bay Parklands where they have been seen regularly. It’s the time of year when young birds disperse so worth looking out for them on sunny days this autumn.’

These are classic stepping stone movements for wrens which have been absent from Glebe for most of the last 10-15 years. As the Society’s submission to the City suggested (Proposed Updates to the 2014 Urban Ecology Strategic Action Plan) more mangroves in particular, could create more habitat stepping stones.

Professor Dieter Hochuli from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney commented: ‘That’s a wonderful observation to support the creation of small habitat plots to help make the urban matrix more navigable for a lot of urban fauna. It will be interesting to see if the Rozelle Parklands might be the source. It’s becoming increasingly urgent to look beyond boundaries for different local government areas to manage the landscape effectively.’

It is more than 20 years since mangrove seeds collected from Olympic Park were planted by the City on the foreshore of Federal Park. We certainly did not expect that such a now well-established waterfront site could provide a safe habitat for wrens.

Then, further wrens were seen at low tide by other members of the Orphan School Creek bushcare group on 4 April (Kim Hague-Smith; three wrens) and 9 April (Caroline Lipovsky; four wrens) – probably it is the low tide that brings the birds to the mangroves as they were not seen at high tide.

The President has written to the Lord Mayor (President’s letter) saying that ‘The City can take credit for its foresight in re-establishing the mangroves in Rozelle Bay. Restoring biodiversity sites in the middle of a large city is time consuming and complex – we congratulate the City of Sydney on such a successful outcome!’