Vagrant Birds September 2016

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.

Birds

I've been reading an Australian bird magazine today and I’m astounded at the number of birds featured in its pages, some of which are totally unknown to me.

The photographs on many of the pages astonish me with their sharpness and clarity and I wonder at exactly how the photographers manage to capture their subjects with a click of the shutter.  Patience, binoculars, the right camera equipment and, as one photo in the magazine shows, preparedness to put up with some discomfort while waiting for birds to arrive, no doubt all contribute to maybe acquiring that once in a lifetime photo.

Among the photos in the magazine that prompted me to stop and take a second look was the one below; the Kolombangara Mountain White-eye, a tiny, fluffy, green bird with a distinguishing white marking around its eyes.  While we have many varieties Silver-eyes in Australia these fluffy little birds hail from the Solomon Islands, and are found on Kolombangara Island which is home to an extinct volcano.

Photo:courtesy Andrew Cox

Advertising, the lifeblood of printed magazines, covers many options for people wanting to take birding holidays, accommodation offering birdlife in abundance at the back door and a station in the West Australian outback where guests can camp in the bush or stay in the National Trust listed homestead.

More accessible and achievable was the list of places around Broome in the north-west of Western Australia where there is a Bird Observatory, beaches with a variety of shore birds and guided tours available.  I might just add Broome and its birdlife  to the bucket list which will be drawn up in the New Year.

If you would like to learn about the birds of the Great Western Woodlands of Western Australia, which extends from east of the wheatbelt before fading into the treeless Nullabor Plain, click here and all will be revealed. 

Questing birds

Each day here in Shepp I pull on my coat, wrap a scarf around my neck then head out the front door to take my daily walk. 

  MyVeryBestFriendCarmel lives in a residential area and my daily walk takes me along the same two or three streets, past houses and their gardens, some well cared for and some not.  Late one afternoon I changed direction and ventured out onto a reserve at the back of the houses; boys were playing football in the chill of the oncoming night, their bikes tossed down on the grass.

As the days passed I found these walks were as much a bird observation exercise as a physical exercise; different birds frequent particular areas depending of the time of day.

Galahs were the dominant group and these birds were on a daily quest for food.  A large group was always foraging in an open area at the start of Pig-iron Drive; they left the ground turned over in their search for buried insects and other choice food items.  These grey and pink birds in their various subspecies are found almost all over Australia; they prefer open country, so the area round Shepp suits them. Often when walking I would come upon a small flock that would immediately take to the air as I drew closer, then settle again only a short distance away.   When I drew near to them again they repeated the process, occasionally flying back to an area behind me, as if it had just occurred to them there was a way to avoid being constantly being interrupted in their food search.

Another day a pair of plovers stalked around a front garden on their thin red legs.  I treat these birds with a great deal of caution, especially at nesting time.  I still have memories of a country childhood and being swooped by plovers intent on protecting their newly hatched chicks.

The best bird find of all was a wary blue crane; the name blue crane is erroneous, the correct name is white-faced heron.  These elegant wading birds are wide spread through south eastern Australia and prefer a low altitude habitat.  They also prefer gardens with unprotected fish ponds which make for a ready take-away meal though any fish pond in this garden was not immediately obvious.

White faced heron

Late one evening, shortly after coming inside from a walk, I saw a tiny bird flitting around on the top of a tall cacti plant in the next door garden, silhouetted against the last light of the day.  It was blue wren having once last frenzied hip-hop dance before night replaced day.

Walking in my local suburbs in Melbourne I would very rarely see any of these birds although on a moonlit night I may hear plovers.