THE BIRDS OF
OZ
(from San Diego Audubon Sketches, Oct., '98)
by Wayne Harmon
Those of you who went on Bill McCausland's 1996 Lake Morena field
trip may remember Bob Shanks, a lean Australian with an Akubra hat. As a
long-time board member of the Bird Observers Club of Australia, Bob was
especially interested in the great number of field trips offered by the San
Diego Audubon Society. I invited him to join us on the Lake Morena trip,
and when he returned to Australia (aka Oz), we began an intensive e-mail
correspondence. Ultimately, Bob invited my wife Peggy and me to Melbourne
to spend January, 1998, with him and the birds of Oz.
The first night in Melbourne, Bob asked how many new birds I would
like to see. I answered, "Perhaps 150 to 200"--not realizing he was
determined to find 200 new birds for us. We were focusing on the states of
Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania, saving the north of Australia for
another trip.
When you first arrive in a new place, every bird is new, and you
rush to write them all down as you get accustomed to different names, field
guides, and habitats. Before we left the U.S., I'd bought and studied the
new Pizzey and Knight field guide. Two birds--the Powerful Owl and the
Tawny Frogmouth--intrigued me, perhaps because of their names, and I vowed
to see them both, but more about that later. The Australians we birded
with used the more portable Simpson and Day guide, so that's what we
carried with us.
Our first overnight trip out of Melbourne was to the Grampians
National Park, northwest of Melbourne. We stayed one night in a B&B owned
by a family of native-plant horticulturists who had, over twenty years,
planted native Australian plants on five acres of their 70 acre farm at
Wartook. They had turned their land into a habitat alive with birds--New
Holland Honeyeaters and Superb Fairy Wrens in the shrubs, with Red-rumped
Parrots, Musk Lorikeets, Red-browed Firetails and Sulphur-crested Cockatoos
on the ground and in the trees.
At dawn the next morning, I walked out into a garden beside the
house and surprised a male gray kangaroo who stood up quickly and stared me
in the eye. I'm 6'3'', and he was my height. He hopped in place for a bit
and then bounded away. As it got lighter I counted 212 more "roos" in the
pastures around the place. Later that day we saw our only two Emus in the
wild. Emus, according to a popular Australian song, can "run the pants off
a kangaroo."
Our second expedition was to Bool Lagoon, one of Australia's most
valuable wetland conservation areas, visited by over 150 bird species.
Bool Lagoon, located 20 km south of Naracoorte in eastern South Australia,
is recognized by the UN as a wetland of international importance. Bool's
beautifully designed wooden boardwalks over the water lead to "bird hides"
("bird blinds" in American English). Bird hides are simple wooden
buildings with benches inside and eye-level slits that allow visitors to
view the birds at close range without disturbing them. The hides are built
right at lagoon edges, where birds are feeding, displaying, raising young;
and you can get closer to them than they'd ever allow, if they saw you.
One of our target birds was the Brolga, a stately long-legged gray
crane, similar to our Sandhill Crane. When we arrived at Bool in the
evening, we thought we'd make a quick trip to the lagoon to see if we could
spot the Brolgas before dark. After driving to the open grassy areas where
they had been seen, we found 24 of them. They were very skittish and kept
flying as we tried to get closer, but we got good looks at them before they
finally disappeared behind a grassy mound. Many birders never get to see
them at all. One ranger who had worked at Bool Lagoon for 5 years said
she had seen them only twice.
We spent the next day checking out the birds of Bool--Little-pied
and Little Black Cormorants, Buff-rumped Thornbill, Chestnut Teal, Musk
Duck, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Purple Swamphen, Magpie Goose, Black-winged
Stilt ( same genus as our Black-necked Stilt), Swamp Harrier, Reed Warbler
(They respond to pishing the way our Marsh Wrens do), Stubble Quail,
Black-tailed Native-hen, Little Grassbird, Black-shouldered Kite (same
genus as ours but different species), Pelican (Australia has just one),
beautiful big Black Swans, the ubiquitous Eurasian Coot, and many others.
We searched all day but never saw another Brolga.
I found it intriguing to discover Australian birds that looked very
similar to North American birds and filled the same ecological niche as
ours in North America, and yet were different birds. When the English and
Scots went to Australia and saw a bird that resembled a British bird, they
named it after what they knew: black and white birds became magpies, and
feisty small birds with stiff tails stuck in the air, they called wrens.
However, based on modern DNA fingerprinting, we now know that Australian
birds are not descendants of Eurasian birds at all. After the continental
plate carrying Australia and New Guinea drifted away from old Gondwana some
60 million years ago, the trapped resident birds of Australia took their
own path of convergent evolution and became the birds that we see today in
Australia, occupying the same niches that birds on other continents occupy.
Thus when I see a small plump bird eating its way DOWN the trunk of a gum
tree, I immediately think of our nuthatch; but it's really a totally
different bird, a sittella, that has evolved in Australia to fill that
niche.
On the road south from Bool Lagoon, we passed through the wine
country of South Australia. The place names--Struan, Glen Roy,
Glenburnie--reflect the fact that much of eastern South Australia was
settled by Scots. There is much open small-grain and grazing land here,
along with vineyards. In the fields along the road, flocks of Galahs,
Long-billed Corellas and Sulphur-crested Cockatoos dine on farmers' crops.
The birds fly up in clouds and land in trees, turning the trees white. We
spotted a Nankeen (Australian) Kestrel hovering in the American Kestrel
fashion. Again the Aussie and American Kestrels look very much alike.
A new life-bird for our guide, Bob Shanks, was a Black Falcon that
sped over our car while we were watching several Plumed Whistling-Ducks on
a small stock pond. We knew we were in raptor country and began looking
for hawks and eagles in the isolated trees and in the sky. Peggy noticed
a huge mass of sticks high in a tree about 100 meters from the road. When
we approached it, we found a pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles guarding the nest.
There was much open field between us and them and they both flew as we got
nearer. We could clearly see that the female with a 2.8 meter wingspan
was much larger than the male. The wedge-tail is Australia's largest eagle.
Tania Ireton, President of the Bay area Branch of the Bird
Observers Club of Australia, took us to the Werribee Sewerage Ponds on the
west side of Port Phillip Bay one Sunday and to the Mornington Peninsula
on the east side of the bay the following Sunday. When I first heard of
the sewerage ponds, I thought, "Only crazy birders go half-way around the
world to visit sewerage ponds," but in one day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. we
had 33 new life birds. We soon got accustomed to the slight sewage smell
which didn't seem to bother the Red-kneed Dotterels, Common Greenshanks,
Red-necked Stints, Pectoral and Curlew Sandpipers, Pied and Sooty
Oystercatchers apparently thriving in the less-than-perfect water. The
whole scene reminded me of a very large Santee Lakes. The deeper water was
loaded with Pink-eared, Blue-billed, Hardhead, and Musk Ducks.
The following Sunday on the Mornington Peninsula, we saw 20 more
new life birds including a Fan-tailed Cuckoo, Shining Bronze-Cuckoo,
Eastern Yellow Robin, Golden and Rufous Whistlers, Striated Thornbill, and
Australasian Gannet, bringing our total count of new Australian birds to
167. In several Mornington Peninsula eucalyptus forests, Bell Miners,
birds with loud bell-like "tink" calls, were rampant in the eucalyptus
trees. (Aussies call the trees "eucalypts" or "gums," reserving the word
"eucalyptus" for the oil.) Bell Miners are aggressive invaders that chase
away all other birds in their territory, resulting in dying trees because
the Bell Miners alone can't keep the insects and lerps (sweet, waxy
secretions on the under-side of leaves produced by the jumping plant louse)
off the gum trees. Yellow-tufted (Helmeted) Honeyeaters, a rare and
endangered species, are especially affected by the Bell Miners' expanding
their range. A colony of Bell Miners was recently found in the botanical
gardens in Melbourne and is causing quiet worry among the curators.
Another troubling bird is the Common Starling, an agricultural pest
introduced in the 1860's that has spread through much of eastern Australia.
Many starlings are trapped and killed by rangers at the Nullarbor Station
in Western Australia to prevent their spread in that state.
Just as many other tourists do, we went to Phillip Island in the
bay south of Melbourne to see the Fairy (Little) Penguins come ashore at
sunset. They appear confused as they follow their Napoleonic leaders up
the beach and go under the hundreds of tourists in the bleachers to find
their burrows and babies. Homing in on the unique call of their babies,
they miraculously find their own. Thousands of Silver Gulls nest on
Phillip Island and can be seen on their nests or guarding their roving
chicks. Southern Californians who have difficulty keying out our many
gulls in all of their phases would have no trouble in southern Australia.
Almost every gull is a Silver Gull, so it's simple.
One three-day trip was to the Murray River (Australia's
Mississippi), which forms the border between Victoria and New South Wales.
Much of the land around the river is agricultural and abundant sloughs and
backwaters provide excellent habitat for birds. At Kerang from a bird hide
we viewed one of the world's largest ibis rookeries. Most are Australian
White (or Sacred), but Glossy and Straw-necked Ibis also breed here. In
the eucalyptus forest around the river town of Echuca, one particularly
birdy spot sheltered a Yellow-throated Miner, Noisy Friarbird, several
Turquoise Parrots, Rainbow Bee-eaters, Brown Treecreepers, Peaceful Doves,
Olive-backed Orioles, a Spotted Pardelote and a White-bellied
Cuckoo-Shrike. Kookaburra families laughed raucously back and forth in the
gum trees. From a paddle steamer on the Murray River at Echuca, we watched
Sacred and Azure Kingfishers fish from branches hanging over the river.
Australia, is noted for its 54 species of parrots. At Badger
Creek Reserve in the Yarra Ranges National Park east of Melbourne, wild
King Parrots and Crimson Rosellas come to the picnic tables and mooch food.
If you hold birdseed in your hands they will fly down, sit on your hands
and pluck out the sunflower seeds.
While we were eating our sandwiches, a five-foot-long goana (an
Australian monitor lizard) slowly crept under our picnic table. Peggy and
I quickly raised our legs, but Bob Shanks didn't. The ranger was in the
area and told him not to move because goanas have a nasty septic bite. No
one moved as the goana lapped its foot-long forked tongue around Bob's bare
leg. The goana, perceiving that it couldn't eat Bob Shanks, slowly crawled
away.
Badger Creek was a spot where we thought we could find a Superb
Lyrebird and a Pilot Bird since they both occupy the same habitat. In a
canyon just off the long trail through the dense eucalyptus rainforest,
Peggy finally found a Lyrebird. Bob and I were on the trail ahead of her,
and both missed it.
A four-day sojourn to Tasmania got us only 20 new birds, but we did
see Yellow Wattlebirds, Tasmanian Native-hens, Black Currawongs, Crescent
and Yellow-throated Honeyeaters, Flame Robins, Tasmanian Magpies, and Green
Rosellas. One rare target bird which we didn't find was the Forty-spotted
Pardelote, found today only in the southeast near Hobart and especially on
South Bruny Island.
Driving through central Tasmania was refreshing because we saw
very few people. In the mountains around the shore of Great Lake, a lake
similar to Lake Tahoe, Peggy and I walked for over an hour, saw one pick-up
truck and boat trailer, some scattered holiday cottages, and not a single
person. We now had 193 new birds.
Toward the end of our Australian trip, we were invited by Ken
Simpson (of Simpson and Day field guide fame) and Zoe Wilson to their four
acres with native plants and a pond in the Yarra Valley northeast of
Melbourne at the southern end of the Great Dividing Range. Ken Simpson,
who is also president of the Bird Observers Club of Australia, led us on a
field trip into the mountains around his house. We saw a Rufous Fantail,
Pilot Bird, and Rose Robin. We didn't see a Lyrebird but heard it go
through all of its imitations of other birds from Kookaburra to Golden
Whistler and White-throated Treecreeper. After seeing a Buff-banded Rail
at the pond near Ken Simpson's house, our total was now 197 new birds.
Birding with Ken Simpson, with his vast knowledge of Australian
birds, must be what it was like birding with Roger Tory Peterson in North
America. In addition to knowing the birds, their ranges, and migratory
habits, Ken also knows their calls and songs and does great imitations
of them, and he is really tuned in to the environment. While the rest of
us would pick a leech off our leg or shoulder and squash it, Ken would pick
his leeches off and carefully place them back on a leaf. But even with Ken
Simpson we couldn't find a Powerful Owl or Tawny Frogmouth.
On Australia Day, January 26th, at a backyard barbecue in
Warrandyte, I noticed a Little Corella at a bird feeder--198 birds. We had
one more birding day planned at Jumping Creek Reserve in Warrandyte State
Park on January 28th with the Melbourne branch of the Bird Observers Club
of Australia. This was our last shot at 200 birds. All 25 in the group
were on the lookout for the Powerful Owl and Tawny Frogmouth, but any new
bird would do. A Varied Sittella scooting down a tree trunk made 199, and
on the way back to the cars someone shouted, "Have you seen a Crested
Shrike-tit yet? Here are several over here." With their black crests,
white striped heads and yellow bodies, the shrike-tits were noisily feeding
along the south bank of the Yarra River. When I said, "That makes 200,"
the whole group broke into spontaneous applause--a truly unforgettable
experience.
It was only by making a quick trip to the Healesville Sanctuary,
northeast of Melbourne, that we finally saw the Powerful Owl and Tawny
Frogmouth--both uncountable, however, because they were in an aviary.