Reported crake sightings at Kelly’s have gone up over
the last few months. (By ‘crakes’ I am referring to Spotted,
Spotless, Baillons.) Numbers reported from some other places seem to be
unusually high also, eg Fivebough. Surely this is because the places referred
to are, at least temporarily, as long as they remain wet, drought refuges, given
the drying of crake habitat elsewhere.
When a wetland dries, the resident crakes would not just
stay there and die; they would try to move elsewhere if they could.
I suppose with the ‘normal’ cycle of drought and
wet periods crakes might have adapted to a cycle of retreat and redispersing,
that is they would be capable of cross-country flights of the distance required.
However if the drying is longer and more widespread and severe than normal,
surely this would seriously affect the base population. I would assume,
for example, that unnatural concentrations at a smaller number of places would
affect breeding There must be significant hazards in movement across
country - cats, foxes, motor vehicles. There may also be a scarcity
of staging points, due to agricultural development.
I remember an excursion to East O’Malley with Dick
Schodde, just after the fires. We were watching a large number of
Yellow-tailed Blacks ransacking the nearby gardens. He said ‘This
is really sad, of course. Theyr’e here for the wrong reasons’.
I only mention this because more – and more easily
seen – crakes is not to me an entirely good thing. It is certainly
not an occasion for ‘Crikey, what a lot of those great little crakes there
are after all!’ When the crakes come out to follow the edge of the retreating
water, it is not because they want to. It is because there is no food
back in the dry cover, where they’d rather be.
I don’t know if there has been any relevant measurement
of what is going on. I suppose not, given the unique character of the
present dry. To some extent, conclusions about waterbird trends generally
might be relevant. The huge numbers of Glossy Ibis at Fivebough is
perhaps a parallel trend. It is not a good sign.
