2 September - a rotten day
At Dryandra State Forest, unfortunately the winds built up to something pretty
wild and out of my total 3 days there, it
POURED and POURED endlessly for 1.5 days. So I had to leave Dryandra on 2
September without seeing a Numbat (I REALLY wanted
to see one), and no Western Shrike-Tit. I might as well say now that, despite
a number of searches in various places over
the whole 7 weeks of my trip, I never saw the shrike-tit.
5 km outside Williams I went past a roadkilled Short-billed Black-Cockatoo and
went to look at it, only to find it was not
dead. That poor bird looked up at me as it flopped around with one good wing
and one broken wing. It's head, eyes and feet
were all fine. I tried to bundle it up in a jumper but it still had a fair
amount of spirit so I threw a jumper over its
head which helped to control that massive bill and quieten it down a bit. 60km
detour one way to a vet in a country town. I
quickly realised the bird wouldn't be able to be released back to the wild and
the vet said there were wildlife carers in the
town, so I held hope of the bird being saved and kept in captivity to live some
happy days.
The vet concluded that the break was too high on the wing (too close to the
body) and hard to splint, and that these breaks
are often subject to infections. So the magnificent bird was euthenased and
its body handed over to CALM. In the
circumstances I had to trust the vet's professional knowledge. But I had
(still have) trouble accepting that the bird
couldn't have been saved.
It was a BIG bird, but it was a young bird: the vet showed me the sheaths on
the feathers.
So sad an incident that I cried about it on and off for days as I wrote up my
diary and sent a letter to a friend (yes, I'm a
wooz). I thought I would bawl the next time I saw Black-Cockatoos in the wild,
but when I did, the sighting was a bit
uplifting as I thought "well, at least there's more of them out there to
continue on".
In Nannup, I put some clothes washing in the caravan park machine, particularly
the jumper I used to bundle up the cockatoo.
Came back after 40 minutes only to find I'd put my clothes in a dryer, not a
washing machine, and I'm out of washing powder.
By now (5.30pm) Nannup is closed. Went into the one open cafe and the owner
kindly sent her daughter home to get me some
washing powder, and finally I was able to do some clothes washing.
What a day.
Irene Denton
Concord West, 12 km from Sydney city, NSW Australia
S 33°50.278' E 151°05.406'
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