Frankly, despite regularly scanning the skies, I’ve
seen none this year. It’s not just that I haven’t seen
any; I am sure that when I’ve looked there have been none within binocular
range.
Apart from the rash of recent chatline reports, I received
the below message over the weekend from a friend on the north coast:
<< One of the more spectacular avian sights since
coming to Dorrigo.
Out in the paddock, weeding on a still fine warm autumn afternoon, when I was
joined by a guessed 200 white-throated needletail (formerly known as
spine-tailed swifts), hawking the abundant flying insects. I have never
seen so many before. I suppose they were getting ready to return to North
Asia.
I was content to watch & weed as they wheeled around, above & close to
me, until a couple collided in mid air just by me. I then decided that it
might be better to retreat, just in case their exuberance got too much
for them, resulting in injury to me.... They are quite large birds, you know.>>
Yes, I do know. In past years I have not been so
swiftless. Indeed I recall back in the days of Ian Fraser’s talking
telephone birdline I reported standing on Isaacs
Ridge while they flashed by at head height and I could look down on swarms of
them criss-crossing in the valley below. On that occasion the noise was striking:
a loud ‘whoota-whoota-whoota’ reminiscent of the sound of an old
ceiling fan at full speed in the bedroom of a rundown guesthouse in the
tropics, recalling the musty smell of an ancient mosquito-net.
Remembering the ‘Ridge’ as something of a
hotspot swiftwise, I walked up there this morning, past a couple of early MFFs
the members of which I would list if that did not entail the more boring kind
of information you get on these chatlines. The view from near the
northern trig station was splendid, with no obstructing trees. You could
see the Tuggeranong Hyperdome and Woden Shopping Square and even Riverside
Plaza, Queanbeyan, with Woolworths supermarket nearby. Unfortunately the
magnificent Westfield complex at Belconnen was obscured by Black Mountain, and
the enormous extent of the earthworks for the Greatest Bulk Goods Outlet in the
Southern Hemisphere (Fyshwick) was partially concealed by the small hill that
is crossed by Hindmarsh Drive between the Monaro Highway and Canberra Avenue.
The Boral quarryworks off Mugga Lane clanked and clattered cheerfully, and gave
off a busy plume of smoke and dust.
There was about three-fifths cloud cover, mainly strato-cu with
some cirro-stratus, conditions to which I believe the adjective ‘stable’
is usually applied, and far removed from ‘approaching storm-fronts’
or ‘steep pressure gradient’ that we are told to associate with an
influx of swifts. There will probably be thousands this afternoon, but I
don’t think I’ll walk up there again. I suppose I
could drive to Belconnen, but having to negotiate the Somme fortifications
around the former Glenloch (‘38th Parallel’) Interchange
is something of a deterrent. ‘Use alternative route’, they
say. Well, I suppose I could drive there via Tharwa, but I’m told
the bridges is closed. Perhaps next summer.
