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Monday September 9 was always going to be an auspicious
day for The Big Twitch as I was sure it would be the day I broke the
"psychological 600 barrier". The big question remaining as I headed out of
Innisfail that morning was what would be the milestone bird?
I headed off through lush cane fields that were once
clothed in rainforest. The sugar industry is doing it tough at the moment
(again) due to a fall in world prices and are asking for a handout from the
government (again). There is something romantic about the sugar industry- the
cane fields do look pretty and the image of the cane cutter is right up there
with the Man From Snowy River in terms of great Aussie icons. But like the
mountain cattlemen, the cane growers have had a major impact on a sensitive
habitat. And the thing that gets me steamed up is that while they are asking for
subsidies in order to make the industry economically sustainable, at the same
time in some areas new fields were still being carved out from the rainforest.
And the toll the industry still takes on the local wildlife is enormous. While
staying at Julatten the cane trucks would rattle through at all times of
day and night getting the crop to the mills, in their rush,
never slowing down for wildlife, much of which ends up squashed on
their front bumpers (the first Lesser Sooty Owl I ever saw had been wiped out by
a cane truck) and where once it was common to find Masked, Barn and Grass
Owls hawking around cane fields at night, these species are now much scarcer
thanks to the excessive use of rat poison.
Luckily there is some lowland rainforest left between Tully
and Mission Beach, and this is the place to go to see Cassowaries. Sadly, even
though the habitat is protected, the birds keep getting knocked over by cars.
There are Cassowary speed limit signs everywhere, but few motorists heed them
and an average of four Cassowaries a year get wiped out- not a good figure as it
estimated that there are only forty adults left in this part of the world.
And I could find none at Lacey's Creek where I was also hoping
to get Pied Monarch. Moving on to Licuala Forest where I have never missed
on Cassowary, I was at first unsuccessful, and then as I was getting in my
car to leave, a male Southern Cassowary led a still stripey
chick out onto the track. Bird number 599, and a stop at the
mangroves at Cardwell netted me bird number 600- Mangrove
Robin. Quite a lovely bird in its own right but not a patch on the
spectacular Cassowary which would have made a fitting milestone bird. I was very
surprised at how filled with joy I was at passing the magic 600 figure. I danced
around the mangroves, filled with not only a feeling of joy, but of
legitimisation. For now, no matter what the final total is, I at least got to
600, quite an achievement in itself. I mean, it took me twenty-two years of
birding to see this many birds, and here I was reaching it in 252 days.
But if I wanted to get anywhere near the record (633) or even
700, then I couldn't rest on my laurels. There's still a lot of birds to left to
see. To this end I found myself that evening at Tyto Wetlands on the outskirts
of Ingham where I did indeed see a Tyto Owl- in this case Eastern Grass
Owl. And the next day I added 602, the Pied Monarch at
Jourama Falls National Park, and 603, Cotton Pygmy-Goose at the
Ross River Dam near Townsville.
A day later I was up on the Eungella Plateau out of Mackay
looking for the Eungella Honeyeater. My advice was that at this time of year it
would be better to look for them in the eucalypt forest adjoining the rainforest
and after checking out several sites (and noting the emergence of some more
southerly species such as Brown Thornbill and White-throated Treecreeper
(nominate race?) ) I had failed to find my target. So I went to the initial
rainforest site I'd planned to go to and as soon as I got out of the car a
Eungella Honeyeater was calling right above me. It gave me a
good look, and then disappeared and I never saw another one.
Six hundred and four species and time to get out of the
tropics. Rolling south I picked up Mangrove Honeyeater at
Toorbul Point near Brisbane- a site where I had missed them earlier in the year.
The waders were in and many of them still in breeding garb.
By nightfall I was up at Lamington National Park, a beautiful
rainforest overlooking the crass development of the Gold Coast-one of my
favourite spots in Australia. I was relying on Lamington for four species. I
missed out on Marbled Frogmouth- will have to rely on Iron Range in the Wet
Season for that species now. I picked up Albert's Lyrebird
within the first kilometre of the Border Track and was to see several
throughout my stay. This was bird number 606. When I started off this year, this
was how many birds I'd seen in Australia in my life. On reaching the
Antarctic Beech above the border I soon picked up Olive
Whistler. They are fairly common in the wet forests down South but I
failed to get on to them down there and had had to wait to get to this spot-
about the only place you get them in Queensland.
Now the only remaining bird to get was Rufous Scrub-bird. This
bird has been about the biggest bastard of a bird in my
tawdry twitching career. I've tried for it three times in the past with no
success. Once a bird actually ran between my legs but went by in such a
brown blur that I couldn't be sure it wasn't an antechinus or a low flying brown
meteor. The difficulty with the Scrub-bird is that not only do they
inhabit Antarctic Beech forests on inaccessible mountain tops, but their habits
are such that they rarely raise their heads above the ferns on the forest floor
making them damn hard to see.
That first day I didn't even hear a bird call. Out on the
border I bumped into Geoff Walker who was also making his way back from the
Torres Strait. We tried using tapes but no luck- the birds at Lamington have
been pretty much taped out by all those Twitchers who've tried for it here over
the years. Geoff had to leave but I still had two more days allocated
for this bird. Next morning out at dawn again for the long walk to the border I
had more success- I actually heard a male singing. I sat down behind a log and
tried to pish the bird in. It ignored me. I tried the tape. It ignored that too.
For twenty minutes it sang within five metres of me hidden in the dense
undergrowth without revealing itself.
My final day saw me trudging dejectedly to the same
site. I calculated that over the three days I had walked fifty kilometres
for this wretched thing, and by now I was despairing of ever seeing it. After a
while at yesterday's site I could hear a scrub-bird making a contact call. I
decided to dispense with any attempt of calling it in and decided I'd try and
stalk the bird. With careful sloth-like movements, I began crawling through the
undergrowth towards the sound. For twenty minutes I moved painfully slowly
through the ferns and moss and lichens, at times slithering on my belly, all the
while the bird continued to make noise within a few tantalising metres of where
I lay.
Eventually, I halted with a small clearing just ahead of me. I
was by now completely stretched out on the ground, entirely covered in moss. And
there it was. A male Rufous Scrub-bird hopped in front of me
making the occasional "chkk" contact call as it probed the moss covered litter
for grubs. Up this close you could see what an ancient bird this is- nothing
fancy in plumage or structure, its beak curving simply out of its head. And then
it was gone, bouncing away into the dim tangle of the undergrowth.
And I was gone too. I danced I jigged, virtually in tears of
relief. Fifteen years after my first attempt I had finally nailed the sucker-
bird number 608. The long trek back to the campground which had seemed like such
a chore earlier that morning was now like a skip through the park. Now it was
time to head South.
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