Vagrant
Noun
a person without a settled home or regular work who
wanders from place to place and lives by begging.
Vagrant bird is a new
term to me and the word vagrant is not one I would have applied to a bird.
However, if you replace the word person with
bird, delete the words or regular work and
lives by begging, the words do come
close to describing migratory birds and other birds that, for whatever reason, sometimes
land in countries where they are seldom seen.
The synonyms for
vagrant also contain a number of words which can be applied to birds: wanderer,
nomad, wayfarer, traveller, migrant, beachcomber and last but not least, bird
of passage.
The past summer saw the
arrival of large numbers of vagrant birds in Western Australia. Some birds arrived, looked about and decided
they might stay on for a time; others took one look, had a breather then immediately
flew off to another place. The arrival
of any of these birds leads to great excitement among bird watchers and those hard-core
devotees known as twitchers.
There is much speculation
about why these birds appear and either stay or leave. Climate change and altered habitat are at the
top of the list and altered habitat can come about by the destruction of
forests and the spread of human habitation.
Unusual weather patterns can lead to birds being blown off course but as
there was very little in the way of really bad weather prior to the appearance of
these birds, other causes are being investigated by researchers.
The Kamchatka Leaf
Warbler (below) put in its first recorded appearance at the Broome Bird Observatory last
summer. This is a small bird which
breeds in eastern Russia and then migrates as far south as Indonesia; no mean
feat for a small bird to travel such a distance.
Not all arrivals have a
happy ending. Russell, the House Crow,
is thought to have arrived by ship at Fremantle in WA and took a shine to his
new home. Unfortunately for Russell,
House Crows are considered an invasive pest and introduced populations have
caused immense problems around the world. All went well for Russell for a while, he
joined up with a gang of Australian Ravens, scavenged for food in the neighbourhood
and then the long arm of the Department of Agriculture reached out and captured
Russell. His new home is in a drawer in
the Western Australia Museum.
A cautionary tale for would-be
boat arrivals of the House Raven variety.
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