On Saturday 5 August at 5.20 pm my cousin David Lumsdaine heard a Noisy
Pitta calling from a clump of dense scrub on private land on the bank of
Cattai Creek (about 60k northwest of Sydney in the County of Cumberland.
David was on his own at the time but is a very experienced recorder of bird
calls, and the call was the distinctive 'walk-to-work' repeated once almost
immediately, which he has heard and recorded many times in northern NSW and
Queensland. On Sunday 6 August David, my wife and I went back to the same
spot at 5.15pm. We all heard the same call at 5.30pm, and David and I each
recorded it.
In the hope that the bird may have taken up residence, I was at the same
spot from 5.15-6.00pm on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 and from 4.47-6.00pm on
Thursday 10, but did not hear the bird. We again checked the same site and
a nearby one a week later on Thursday 17 with no result
The limited research I have done in materials available at home raise some
questions about how the bird got there. I share my thoughts in the hope of
illumination from the more expert. It would appear that the Noisy Pitta is
not one of those birds that (like the Bristlebird for instance) was once
common in the Sydney area but has disappeared as the result of loss of
habitat. Neither North (Nests and Eggs of Birds found breeding in Australia
and Tasmania 1906-1909, Vol 2 p 309) nor Campbell (Nests and Eggs of
Australian Birds, 1900, Vol 2, p 1) treat the Noisy Pitta as ever having
ranged anywhere near as far south as Sydney, except that both refer to a
report by Dr EP Ramsay that a single specimen was shot near Wollongong in
1883. Ernie Hoskin's second edition of Hindwood and McGill's Birds of
Sydney, covering the County of Cumberland from 1770-1989, says that the bird
in the Wollongong report had been considered in the first edition as
possibly an aviary escapee. It was south of the County and the only reports
in the County had been of a bird caught by a dog at St Ives on 8 April 1976,
a bird caught at Bondi Junction on 2 May 1986, a bird seen in Elouera
Bushland in 9 May 1986 and one seen in the Royal National Park on 26 July
1986. Hoskin suggested that the first three birds may have been lost while
migrating, but made no comment on the latter two (presumably because they
were seen in locations where residence was possible and no follow up
observations had been made).
I have no source for reports between 1989 and 1996. A search of Birding-aus
archives (which go back to 1996) yielded reports of a bird seen in Kangaroo
Valley in October 1999, a bird picked up alive in Rockdale in April 2000 and
'waiting for a lift up north', a bird at Mt Keira, Wollongong on 22 April
2000, one at Field of Mars Reserve, East Ryde on 4 May 2000, and a juvenile
at Taronga Park Zoo between 17 May and 26 June 1999. I haven't been able to
access the Atlas maps but the Birds Australia Rare Birds list give no
additional sightings
It would appear from the books and Birding-aus reports that the current
southern stronghold of the Noisy Pitta is the Gloucester Tops/ Barrington
Tops/Copeland area. On the information I have our report is the eighth in
the County of Cumberland, with three more slightly south of the County, a
total of eleven. Given the recent sightings at Mt Keira and Kangaroo
Valley, the hypothesis that the 1883 bird was an aviary escapee now seems
unnecessary, although North indicated that the species was a successful
aviary bird. On this basis only the Bondi Junction, and Rockdale birds were
out of habitat and in that sense lost (Trevor Quested says that the Taronga
Park bird was in a small patch of rainforest-like habitat). The majority
were in habitats that could have been deliberately chosen.
The hypothesis that birds got lost while migrating has some difficulties.
The finding of five birds in April/early May and one in October would be
consistent with an autumn/spring migration pattern, but three have been in
June/July/August -winter months. None were associated with reports of bad
weather, and there was no rough weather before our recent sighting.
And what is the migration route? According to G J Ingram's account in
Cuckoos, Nightbirds and Kingfishers p 179 (in the National Photographic
Index Series) the southern subspecies (v.versicolor) does not migrate north
south but only between the Great Dividing Range and coastal lowlands. (In
winter they appear in Brisbane suburban gardens).
Another possibility is that the birds were surplus population dispersing
from reducing habitat in the Barrington/Gloucester/Copeland Region, probing
south in the hope of finding new territory.
Finally I wonder whether there may be more birds around than we realise. On
Birding-aus in April 2000 Dr Peter Woodall referred to his work on Noisy
Pitta calling patterns in Brisbane (Emu 97:121-125). Apparently they do not
call at all during the day in winter, calling only at sunset with one or two
calls. Dusk had really set in when our bird called, and normally there
would be no birders around to hear at that time.
Sorry for the length - I make up for it by infrequency of messages.
Hal Wootten
PO Box 255 Glebe NSW 2037
Phone 02 9692 9354 Fax 9660 1503
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