An ice storm, a flood and eight invisible fish: the fraught tale of a frog pond

hailstones in hand crop long

Water features have everywhere in Berowra this last year.  With half the suburb’s roofs smashed to bits by golfball sized hailstones just before Christmas, an ice-storm followed an hour or so later by torrential rain, lots of those water features were indoors and distinctly unwelcome.  In a suburb that has come to be known over the months of waiting for insurers to come to the party, as “Tarpaulin Heights” we got off relatively lightly, with our indoor water feature making only a cameo one-time appearance.

Inundation was the origin of our new outdoor water feature as well.  Thanks to topography and a inexplicably ruptured stormwater drain – I did fear at one time it was an inexplicably ruptured sewer, so I’m thankful for small mercies – when the rain comes down in Berowra, most of it seems to come through our backyard.

The weather pattern in Australia now, even here on the coastal fringe where the trees are still alive and there is grass, which is sometimes even green, seems to be long dry months punctuated by occasional periods of quasi-apocalyptic rainfall.  So catching some of the run off and making some use of it seemed like a good idea.  And then there’s my fantasies about frogs.

So in December last year, I dug a big hole, downhill from the stormwater drain and uphill from my veggie garden.  Deep holes are not easy to dig on Hawkesbury sandstone.  I was aiming for a depth of no more than 30cm, since I really didn’t want to have to fence my pond, but even 30 cm was a push. I rationalised the shallowness of the hole with reference to the gently sloping edges that would allow the amphibians of my dreams to rest comfortably on the edge of the pond.  Not a very convincing excuse to avoid further shovel work.

releasing fish

I lined the hole with a few centimetres of sand from the local garden centre.  Carpet underlay is sometimes recommended for a layer underneath pond liner but I went an old trampoline mat, since that’s the kind of thing I have lying around in my shed.  Retrospectively I’m not sure that was a great idea.  On top of that I put down rubber pond liner – quite a lot more expensive than vinyl, but not plastic and, in a household full of underused bikes, I figured, quite patchable.  In theory.  Underneath that footlingly small pond is six square metres of heavy duty rubber.

lily leaves late Jan

Nymphoides montana. I think.

Sensible guides to pond making recommend that you set up your fountains and filters properly, then add native plants, give it a week or so and then add fish.   However, a couple of days after setting up the pond with a solar powered aerator, native grasses (Carex fascularis and Schoenoplectus Mucronatus) and pond plants (Marsilea mutica, and if memory serves, Nymphoides montana) I spotted a huge number of wrigglers frisking gaily around their new habitat, and decided we would need to go fish shopping.

Our neighbours had demonstrated their true commitment to biodiversity by not just accepting but actively welcoming the idea of frog mating calls 24-7 outside their bedroom windows.  However, we thought adding a vast number of mosquitoes to the local ecosystem might not necessarily go do down equally well.  We decided to buy two pairs of pacific blue eyes to populate our pond, while we waited for other insect eaters – frogs and dragonfly larvae and the like – to arrive.

Pacific blue eyes are small fish – less than 8 cm in length and usually much smaller – that are keen mozzie eaters but not big enough to devour frog spawn.  They’re locals all up and down the East Coast, inhabiting both fresh waters and estuaries, so not too fussy about water quality.  Our local aquarium shop had a stock of them, though the staff were pretty clueless about which fish were native and which were not, offering us white cloud minnows (originating in China) as a possible alternative.  We took our two pairs of tiny, quasi transparent fish home and Ms 12 and good friend and frog lover from next door carefully introduced them to the pond, taking time to equalise the temperature of the water to minimise shock.

Fish introduction 2 before flood crop

All that happened around midday on December 20, the day of the hail storm and subsequent torrential downpour.  Within hours of settling our blue eyes carefully into our little pond, our backyard looked like this:

Ms 12 was desperately trying to block the exit from the pond, but I think realistically the Pacific blue eyes were halfway to Berowra Creek by this point.  There was much weeping and gnashing off teeth, counterbalanced, on my part at least, by a certain smugness that I hadn’t bought white cloud minnows or gambezi fish or something else that you wouldn’t want to end up in your local waterway.

Of course, what with the water being murky and the fish being small, shy and in essence invisible, we weren’t quite sure if we still had pacific blue eyes or not. Rather than waiting for the mosquito murmuration that would tell us that we didn’t, and with an eye to diminishing the level of weeping, we went back to the aquarium shop for yet another couple of pairs.

That was a nearly a year ago now, and there have been no further sightings of the fish.  The solar powered bubbler carked it in another downpour, along with the rainbow nardoo which I accidentally ripped out while clearing out excess algae during winter months.   But the wriggler count has stayed low and the pond has done pretty well as a habitat.  Not to mention the fabulous opportunity it’s given me to buy new plants (full list at the bottom of the blog)

On the down-side, I’ve been surprised how often I have to top the pond up with water.  Either it has a surprisingly high level of evaporation for a pond in shade much of the day or the logs and rocks I dragged around the yard to make a naturalistic edging have punctured the rubber lining in some mysterious but annoying way.  Perhaps there’s a reason people don’t recommend using old trampoline mats underneath your pond.

One way or another, I have become a pond slave.  I’m constantly ruminating on where I’m going to get my next hit of  non-chlorinated water. The many many hail-holes in our gutters all have a bucket underneath them and I usually have a bucket of tap water off-gassing somewhere around the yard. I have heard rumours there may be better ways of collecting rainwater than this.  Working on it.

Blue banded bee in flight cropped

Blue banded bee on Artenema fimbriatum (koala bells)

It was lovely to see the blue banded bees the visiting koala bells and dragonflies hovering over the water, but we’ve had to be patient with the frogs. The approach you take to getting a frog is a bit like the approach 1950s women had to take to getting a boyfriend – make yourself appealing and wait.  Chytrid fungus is devastating frog populations across the world and if you go and collect frogspawn or tadpoles you can help it spread.  So we waited.

Skinks by the pond closeup

A few months back I heard the distinctive pock of a striped marsh frog in amongst the waterside foliage. I was beside myself with excitement, but after I let the chooks out to freerange for the afternoon, the marshie disappeared.  Troubling. It seemed like having both chickens and frogs might be an impossible dream.

Apricot by the pond 2 crop

Apricot nibbling at the microlaena stipodes lawn.  And possibly frogs.

But by the end of winter, another striped marsh frog was in situ, vamping the local females with the alluring noise of a loudly dripping tap.  Perhaps this male was too large to be wolfed down by the chooks on their visits to the pond for a drink and an insect snack.

And, glory be, last week we spotted a couple of handfuls of tadpoles, huddling at the bottom of the pond near some algae.  I am now officially a frog mumma, as my daughter said.  But I’m not feeling too much eco-smugness.  According to the Australian Museum, the striped marsh frog is an unfussy beast – it likes a pond but even a polluted ditch will do.  Apparently they’ve been found breeding in dog’s drinking bowls.

So no pressure.  The bar has been set low for us as aspiring frog parents. Let’s see how low we can limbo.

Pond in Nov 19

Native plants in and around our pond.

Artenema fimbriatum (koala bells) – blue or pink flowers in summer.

Bacopa monnieri (Brahmi, memory herb) – small white flowers.  Grows in and near water – edible plant.

Carex fascularis (tassel sedge).  Grows in moist to wet soils in part shade, up to a metre high.

Centella asiatica (Gotu kola, pennywort).  Edible plant.  Grows in part shade in moist soils.

Cissus Antarctica (kangaroo vine)    Planted in the drier area around the pond.

Doodia aspera (prickly rasp fern).  Grows in moist areas, nice pink new growth.

Finicia nodosa

Hibbertia scandens (guinea flower)   Flowers in shade,

Isolepsis cernua (Live wire) – low growing grass with interesting bright seed heads.

Juncus flavidus (billabong rush)

Libertia paniculata – in moist areas near pond in shade, alongside ferns. White flowers in early spring.

Lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife)- growing in drier areas near pond.  Dark purple flowers in autumn.  Dies down in winter.

Marsilea mutica (rainbow nardoo) – pond plant.  Beautiful patterned leaves.

Microlaena stipoides (weeping grass) – grass surrounding pond.  Grows well in shade in damp or dry conditions.

Mazus pumlio (swamp mazus) – grows in moist soil.  White flowers in autumn.

Nymphoides montana – pond plant with beautiful yellow flowers.

Peperomia (native) – native succulent that grows well in shade.

Poa labillardiere (tussock grass) – grown in drier areas around the pond

Schoenoplectus Mucronatus – rush growing in the pond.  Interesting spiky seed pods.

Tetragonia tetragonoides (warrigal greens) – edible plant. Grows very well in damp or dry soil in part shade. Delicious to humans and also chickens.

Tripladeua cunninghamii (bush lily) – grows well in part shade, pink flowers in spring. I  killed it.

Dragonfly dark later

An eagle in suburbia

Even by Sydney’s high standards – a city of four and a half million people surrounded by national parks – Berowra is absurdly well supplied with wide open spaces.

Bute and sunny trees

Upstream in Cowan Creek from Bobbin Head, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

There’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on the eastern side of the railway track.  To the west, on the other side of the Berowra creek, Marramarra National Park; to the north Muogamarra, only open to the public on six weekends a year and further, beyond the Hawkesbury, Brisbane Waters, Popran and Dharug National Parks.

Pelican graces distant 2 copy

Pelican grace at the mouth of Mullet Creek in Brisbane Water National Park

To the south, the second smallest and newest of them, Berowra Valley became a national park in 2012, soon after we moved here.  It follows the line of Berowra Creek through the suburbs as far as Cherrybrook.

If you put your kayak in Berowra Creek at the entertainingly named Dusty Hole and paddle upstream, you’re not in the wilderness. On the other side of the park, there’s the horsey country of Berilee and Dural – my go-to place for compost-making – and on this side you’re just a hop skip and a jump from Kuring-gai Industrial Park, featuring Inflatable World, the Steggles chicken factory and a host of timber and roofing suppliers.

But when you’re on the water at dawn, you could be in the middle of nowhere.

White faced heron profile crop

White faced heron hunting in Berowra Creek

 

On a high tide, you can wend your way past the sandstone rock arch quite a way up Sam’s Creek.  For all its outsize weeds and murky water, this does not feel like gully just a couple of ks downhill from the freeway.

Mouth of Sam's creek adjusted

The mouth of Sam’s Creek

Last weekend, I took a favourite side trip, down an alleyway of mangroves to a waterfall amplified by the rains.

Waterfall blurry 2

Waterfall into Berowra Creek

Below the footbridge that crosses Calna Creek, by the boardwalk across the saltmarsh, is a good place to pull in and stretch your legs.  The Great North Walk and the side tracks up Lyrebird Gully meet there, so there’s always a danger of being being forced to listen to an energetic conversation about property prices from the Sunday morning walkers, but skimming across the shallows up Calna Creek you can almost always outpace them.

There’s even a place to camp on the way at Crosslands Reserve, absurdly close to the Hornsby shops.  There’s a hint of civilisation as you pass the run-down convention centre and catch the smell of breakfast bacon, and then you’re back in the fog and the towering eucalypts.

Shiny trees and blue fog past crosslands

 

It’s 18ks, or thereabouts, from the ferry to the rock garden that’s the navigable limit of the creek, and back again.  And in the hours before the scouts stir in their sleepingbags, the creek is ridiculously quiet.  Apart from the inevitable lyrebird, busying itself with car alarm impressions in the undergrowth.

Illuminated trees at Crosslands crop

Illuminated trees by the campsite at Crosslands

But on the way back from the headwaters last weekend, something new.

Wedgie wide

A wedge-tailed eagle in Berowra Creek

A wedge-tailed eagle enjoying the morning sunshine, high above the water.

Of course, there are eagles on the creek every day of the week – on a day out in a boat you’re guaranteed to see the white bellied sea eagles that hunt there, and maybe even hear a few of their embarrassingly duck-like calls.  I saw a sea-eagle last Sunday, as usual, waiting above the water for the mist to clear.

Sea eagle in fog crop tight

White-bellied sea eagle in the mist

And once I saw an osprey by the creek, slightly dishevelled and hungry looking.

But there’s still something special about seeing the largest raptor in Australia hanging at the end of your street.  Maybe the leafy north shore counts as the open forest wedgies favour.  There’s certainly plenty of rabbits to keep them going.

I’ve been reminded this week that Berowra is more like a country town than suburbia. When there’s a car crash, residents come out to redirect traffic.  When your kid falls and grazes their knee walking to school, a passerby scoops them up and drives them home.  Lost keys and wallets speed their way to their owners.  Maybe the eagles have picked up on the rural atmosphere.

Rural enough for rabbits and roadkill, shall we say, but not so much that we’re not murderously anxious about them carrying off our newborn lambs.  With the stories of wedgies poisoned in their hundreds, I’m glad to see them here.  And I’m glad to be here too.

Insect head reflection

More raptor stories from around these parts

Encounters with eagles

Death and good fortune: a peregrine hunting in Cowan Creek

Two sad islands, three whistling kites

Sex, nests and dog fighting: our family of sparrowhawks get in the family way

Death and sibling rivalry: our baby sparrowhawks learn to hunt

The very big fish

 

 

Murder, imprisonment and native grasses

This blog starts and ends calmly and peaceful as we consider lush grass growing.  In the middle there’s some horrifying interspecies violence – I’ll tell you before it happens so you can look away if you need to.

When we first into our place nearly a decade ago, there was plenty of grass in the backyard.  Note, I don’t say lawn.  Which is fine by me, since an array of weeds offer much better nutritional resources for chickens than a monocultural sward.

So a sequence of domestic fowl have enjoyed the delicious mix of trad, ehrharta, buffalo grass, couch, and a plethora of other greens as a supplement to their laying mash and scratch mix.   The trad went first.  Chickens absolutely love this horrid weed and have scratched out every shred, producing the fabulously golden yolk that are a definitive feature of your happy free-range egg. For a while the other grasses held on, but, over a few dry winters, as our flock grew to six chooks and an apparently infinite number of semi-resident brush turkeys, the greenery eventually lost the fight.

Sequence of brush turkeys crop

Peak brush turkey

Perhaps not surprisingly, I don’t have a lot of pictures of the muddy home farm during this “trench warfare” period.  And I have absolutely no pictures of the traumatic events that followed.  It’s taken me nearly a year to get up the gumption to write about it.

Baby brush turkey astonished

Very cute baby brush turkey hanging out with our chicks a couple of years back

Until November last year, the many brush turkeys hanging around the backyard were an annoyance but nothing more: scratching up seedlings, stealing eggs and making free with the chickens’ dinner.  The baby brush turkeys liked to huddle up to our newly hatched little chicks.  The older turkeys also seemed to like hanging out with the flock but were easily spooked by them.  It only took boss chook Treasure giving a funny look to have the brush turkeys scatter or even flap away. But that all changed last spring.

A large male brush turkey started hanging around, pursuing and doing his best to mount the chickens.  One day we noticed that several of the girls’ combs were bloodied, and concluded it was the work of this nasty animal. The neighbours had spotted the sex predator too. There were rumours of pet birds being attacked all up and down the street.

Concerned, we decided to keep the girls in Colditz, the steel-framed predator-proof cage for a day or two, rather than letting them roam the yard as usual.  The next day I was working from home, and by the afternoon, seeing no signs of the turkey and feeling sorry for the poor chooks pacing up and down in their constrained night quarters, like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape, I decided to let them out for a few hours.  I went back to my computer.

If you are easily upset, now is the time to look away.

Brush turkey wattle closeup.jpg

Male brush turkey extreme closeup

Late that afternoon I heard a pitiful squawking and rushing down to the yard.  All of the chooks were bleeding copiously from their scalps and two of our poor girls were mortally wounded, with huge slashes through their backs and terrible gouges to their heads.  Then we heard pitiful sounds from the last of our neighbour’s free-range chooks.  We jumped across the fence to rescue it, but too late – its eye had been pecked out. All three birds died soon after.

Needless to say I was inconsolable.

The only way I could atone my guilt was to make the surviving chickens a safe place to stay.  So that Saturday, in a frenzy, I pulled together an implausible collection of wire, wood from futon bases, half an aviary, parts of a picket fence, innumerable pieces of bamboo and that old standby, trampoline netting, to make a 8 square metre covered run adjacent to Colditz. The run featured Palm Beach as an elevated hangout zone and egg laying area, perches at a range of heights and diameters and its own personal orange tree.

The chooks were safe, and over the next few weeks slowly recovered from their head wounds.  But they weren’t happy.

So over the festive season, I had another crack, making an extension the same size again, which admittedly did involved purchasing a couple of steel droppers and a box of screws.  Otherwise, I was extraordinarily pleased I was able to make the “outdoor room” entirely from rubbish I scrounged from the side of the road.

Chook run extension

The outdoor room, featuring cot railing and an indoor clothes hanger feeding hatch

Now the chooks were secure in their generous run, an unworthy thought came to me.  The scorched earth of the backyard, without a single blade of grass and denuded of  every remaining seed, was now perfectly prepared for something I’d long aspired to have – a backyard full of native grass. The kids had started expressing a longing for a little bit of soft lawn to walk on, and I was keen to take on the challenge.  Buffalo, kikuyu and ehrharta outcompete native grasses, but thanks to the chooks, I doubted there was a single weed seed left on the premises.

It was time.

I decided to mostly use microlaena stipoides, weeping grass, a fine bladed grass that tolerates shade and enriched soils and, once established, copes with minimal watering.  I ordered a couple of hundred grams of a hybrid microlaena called Griffin weeping grass, a low growing variety bred by the Department of Botany at the University of New England.

My first sowing was in early summer – the best time for this variety – warm enough for a speedy germination and not so hot it’s impossible to keep the seed bed moist.  I raked in the seeds – they shouldn’t be buried more than 1 and a half centimetres deep – and covered them with the veggie nets that I usually use to protect seedlings from bowerbirds, chickens and possums that aren’t trying too hard.

The Great Berowra Storm of Christmas 2018 treated us relatively kindly ( two broken skylights is a pretty good outcome from golf ball sized hail) but did significantly undermine my efforts to even distribute those rather expensive grass  seeds.  But I guess the torrent saved me watering for a few days, as well as reminding me why we needed grasses and their root systems to stop our topsoil flowing away on those occasions when our yard becomes a tributary to Berowra Creek.  On hot days when we didn’t experience a climatic apocalypse, I did get out the hose for the first month or two – microlaena needs to be kept moist until its root system is sorted.

In the light of its inpropitious beginnings, the microlaena has done pretty well, coping with the chooks snacking on it a couple of days a week.  That brutish brush turkey has never returned (I suspect foul play given his cruel behaviour to most of the hens in the street) but we like to let them roam when we can keep an eye on them.  And the native grass has remained beautifully green through yet another very dry winter.  In the picture above, alongside the weeping grass, you can see my low-skill terracing with fallen wood and another native grass, poa labillardiere. The aim is to redirect any storm water into our new pond (more on that another day)

So after two days of drenching rain,  I decided this afternoon to sow another packet of griffin weeping grass, filling the gaps scoured by last December’s floods.  Yet more trampoline netting has been hauled out of the shed to protect the newly spread seed from the chooks on their weekend perambulations.

Even if I’m slightly nervous of what they might do to my baby grasses, I’m grateful to our girls.  Without their commitment to scratching and salad, we would never have got this far, and certainly not without reaching for roundup or something equally scary.   I hope I can return the favour by keeping them safe (if not always happy) and feeding them plenty of greens.

Microlaena and stepping stones

More stories of life, death and gardening from our backyard

Night of the living mulch: cover crops for the zombie apocalypse

Andy Ninja’s great escape

Chicken TV: the make-over show

DIY by subtraction: the kiwifruit arbor

The phantom egg eater: caught in the act

The singing and the sea

Bute with shiny landscape tidiedWhen you put your boat in at Cowan Creek, you know you’re paddling in the sea.  Yes, there are rocky slopes on every side, and eucalypts and banksias lean over the shoreline.  The rows of hot pink bells of epacris longifolia dangle amazingly close to the waves.

But look over the side of your boat, especially in this big dry, and your gaze falls metres deep into into the crystal clear green water.  It might be called a “creek” but there’s no murky river water here.  Further downstream, where Cowan Creek meets the Hawkesbury proper at Broken Bay, the Pacific meets the horizon and you really know you are in the ocean.

Fishing boat and west head little boy

Fishermen off Flint and Steel Point

Cormorant with fish

Cormorant off Juno Point having a snack

But far above the official mouth of the river – the limit of “flat water sailing” drawn between Juno Head and Flint and Steel Bay – the water is briny.  The tide rolls up the Hawkesbury as far as the Grose River Valley, 138 kilometres from the sea, taking a wedge of salty water upstream.  If Broken Bay, where these pictures were taken, is essentially a marine environment, Cowan Creek is not too much different.

Pixellated yachts

Yachts off Cottage Point

Because of course, the Hawkesbury is a drowned river valley.   The river channel that once wound its way twenty five kilometres to the east, across the continent shelf, has long ago disappeared two hundred metres or more beneath the ocean.  The late Quaternary Marine Transgression that drowned the Hawkesbury started 18,000 years ago and went on for 10,000 years, with the water level peaking just a metre or two above current sea levels.

Paul Boon, in his fascinating history of the Hawkesbury, reports that during that time, sea level rose at perhaps 8-10 metres every millennium, at some times as 40 metres in a thousand years (Boon, 2017, Chapter 3). It‘s hard to imagine what that must have been like for the first people here, the Guringai and Dharug people, moving again and again ahead of the rising tide, away from the coastal flat lands to the hills of the Hornsby plateau.

Side illuminated trees for crop

On the way to Stingray Bay

Even more mindboggling to think, as Boon quietly points out, that over the last few decades sea level has been creeping up by around three millimetres a year. If the CSIRO scientists are right, and I for one don’t doubt they are, sea levels are changing as worryingly fast, if not as fast as the speediest rises in the Flandrian Transgression. On the bright side if I live long enough, there’ll be far more of the upper reaches of Cowan Creek to explore, in an admittedly sweaty and decrepit manner, in my kayak

Pink cloud and cowan creek

Sunrise sky near Cotton Tree Bay

Last weekend’s paddle reminded me of what a special place the Hawkesbury is, a drowned river valley where, after rain, waterfalls tumble off the sandstone straight into the sea.  I was coming back from a jaunt to Smith’s Creek when, heading into a bay to avoid a plague of water skiiers, I heard a lyrebird going for broke.

According to Birdlife Australia, superb lyrebirds are inhabitants of moist forests. I’m sure the one I heard scratching around in the undergrowth by the shore, would soon be heading back to the gullies and the treetops.  But in its distant melange of calls – of satin bowerbirds, kookaburras, currawongs, red wattlebirds and other things I just can’t recognise – was a sound I’d never heard a lyrebird make before.  I’m sure I heard an impression of that paradigmatic bird of the beach – the silver gull.

And that’s the soundtrack of the Hawkesbury estuary, right there,

 

What are your bird call spotting skills like, dear reader?  Can you recognise any other shore birds in this estuarine lyrebird’s song?  If you can spot any extra calls, please let me know!

Other stories from Cowan Creek and thereabouts

A glimpse of a peregrine falcon hunting: death and good fortune in Cowan Creek

Old hands: how Smith’s Creek was nearly Canberra

Stingray Bay – lost and found

The Hawkesbury in winter: the shortest days and how to use them

Broken Bay at low ebb: the troubled history of Hawkesbury oysters

Around the point 2

A winter morning in Cowan Creek

Shift change on the Mooney Mooney mudflats

Sometimes on these winter mornings, really properly waking up takes a while.  Hopefully you’re reasonably alert by the time you get behind the wheel and barrel down ridge-line freeway with a kayak strapped on the roof of your vehicle.  But it turns out, some days, when you arrive at the boat ramp, the landscape hasn’t quite woken up either.

The river’s still rubbing the sleep out of its eyes.

Last Saturday morning, no signs of morning mist in Mooney Mooney Creek but the resident royal spoonbills seemed far from ready to face the day.

Sleeping spoonbills

I hung around for a while, seeing if anyone would make a move when the first rays hit the water. Eventually one spoonbill started going about his morning ablutions in just the kind of groggy way the not-really-a-morning person would do – staggering around in the shallow water to no particular effect; wetting his whistle (or in this instance, spoon) and doing a bit of ad hoc grooming.

As he sleepily ruffled his feathers, he looked so torpid it seemed like he might just leave his head under his wing and go back to sleep

I thought the rest of the group might wake and start looking around for breakfast, but no. I love watching spoonbills searching for food, their bills swishing from side to side as they walk through the shallow water, feeling for critters with those vibration-detecting papillae. It would have be nice to hang around.  But the tide was dropping and a long stinky walk across the mudflat dragging the boat wasn’t how I wanted to start my day.

Distant poles very very close

By the time I came back from my jaunt up Mooney Mooney Creek it was low tide, and brunch was over for the spoonbills.

The royals were comfortably seated high above the action – there had been a shift change.  The white-faced herons were out in force.  Twenty at least on the tidal islands and silty shores between the freeway and Spectacle Island.

The herons are ubiquitous on the Hawkesbury of course.  I’ve never yet been out in the boat without seeing one, or a pair (or two or three or even more).   But this spot, between a tumbledown wharf and a band of mangroves, is the only place I’ve seen spoonbills in these parts.  Royal spoonbills only feed in water less than 40 centimetres deep, hunting for fish in the sweet water and crustaceans in the salty. I guess this spot at the mouth of Mooney Mooney Creek, with its shoals and shallows, fits the bill perfectly.

The white-faced herons, on the other hand, are generalists.  Birdlife Australia describes them as “extremely versatile”- “seen in many different wetland habitats: they occur on reefs, in rock pools and mudflats by the coast, in estuaries and saltmarsh, swamps, rivers, drains and at farm dams; they even occur in pasture and hypersaline wetlands.”

Here we see herons hanging out on the rocky shores of Berowra Creek; hunting in a freshwater swamp at Ganguddy in Wollemi National Park; poised elegantly in a tree at high tide in Marramarra Creek  and leaping in a demented manner to catch some kind of flying bug in the playground of the local primary school.

They’re everywhere and they eat nearly anything – frogs, lizards, fish and crabs as well as whatever critters live around school soccer pitches.  On an afternoon walk to Waratah Bay from Berowra station, we even saw them chowing down on squid.

Sparkly heron upright corrected

On Saturday, as I jumped into the boat, an older fella asked me if I had been paddling around there before.  I obviously looked clueless, a middle aged woman in long johns and an implausible beanie, heading off on my own.  Watch out for the gangs of jet-skiers that tear up and down the river, he warned me.  I reassured him – I’d be wending my way through the Mooney Mooney oysterbeds, not the best territory for high speed jet-powered exploits (I’d almost like to see them try).

oysterpoles b&w ripples

Oysterfarm at low tide

But, in truth, what keeps me and my little wooden kayak safe and sound is that I’m more like the spoonbills than the herons.  I’m a specialist.  I’m not out there in the middle of day or the middle of the summer, with the boofy blokes and the powerboats. I’ll take the shallow water and the early shift.

sparkly head down corrected long

More stories from Mooney Mooney Creek

Meet the Royals

The river that knew 

Broken Bay at low ebb

Nine herons hunting

 

The one-eyed butcherbird

Butcherbird in tree good eye gleaming 2

We had an unusual visitor this weekend – a cocky grey butcherbird, turning up first in the branches of the Japanese maple that reaches up to our back deck, and then hopping boldly onto the balustrade.

BB profile horizon corrected cropped

Our butcherbird showing off his hooked beak

Butcherbirds are just the kind of generalists – like fellow “corvoids”, magpies and currawongs – that do really well in urban areas.  But we’re rarely had them turn up at our place before.

And this lovely lad (or lass – they look too similar for an amateur like me to distinguish) was notable in another way, too – it had only one fully functioning eye.

Looking side on you could see a glimmer of a right eyeball, but it was sunk back into the feathers of the head – on a front view only his inquiring left eye was visible.

Butcherbird on ground looking at me frontallycrop

Our one-eyed butcherbird

The wounded eye seemed to have healed long ago – this guy was distinctly perky and healthy looking, if a little edgy.  And this was an adult bird – no sign of the brown and buff colours of a juvenile (like this one spotted at Narrabeen Lake a few years ago).  So whether it had been injured as a chick or as an adult, it seems to have been getting along okay for quite some time.

Juvenile grey butcherbird crop long

Juvenile grey butcherbird

In the past, animal rescue organisations assumed that birds with serious injuries to an eye wouldn’t make it if they were released from captivity.  Usually birds found wounded in this way were euthanised.  But in Germany and the US, researchers and birdwatchers have reported hunting birds like owls and eagles surviving for years in the wild – and even successfully breeding and raising chicks – with only one functional eye.

On a first glance, it seems obvious that binocular vision would be important for judging distances when flying.  An early twentieth century ornithologist proposed that “a bird is a wing guided by an eye” but it seems there’s a lot more to eyesight in birds than navigating through the air.

Researchers think that binocular vision is more about being able to see what you’re doing with your beak than getting around on the wing. Birds that have to do tricky things with their bills – cormorants making sure the fins of the fish they’ve just caught are in the right position to slide nicely down their throats, for instance – need to see what they’re doing.  Having your eyes at the front of your head means you’re less likely to spot a predator from behind, but it’s worth it for the tucker.

It was interesting to watch our visitor managing life with a limited visual field.  He could certainly fly, and RB saw him successfully catch something that was scuttling around on the deck.  That said, when we (naughtily) fed him a few pieces of meat, he seemed to struggle a little to get a handle on it.

He was also pretty twitchy, reacting to every sound, looking regularly over his shoulder so he could keep tabs on his surroundings with his good left eye.  Butcherbirds usually dive down on prey from above, and as he looked out for tasty treats below, he kept his head cocked to maximise his vision.  As a someone with only one “good” ear, I recognise the advantages of that head tilt!

Butcherbird facial closeup good

Our one-eyed bird keeping an tabs on surroundings with his one good eye

Our visitor also seemed to understand the possibilities of humans as a resource.  At one point he flew right up to where I was sitting by the balustrade, looked me in the face and “spoke” to me in a mildly demanding way familiar to me from my teenaged childen.  Later on, I went inside, leaving the sliding door was open, just a bit. The butcherbird hopped up to the door,  and after a few moments of hesitation, continued straight through into the house.

Butcherbirds are smart and excellent problem solvers.  They’re also creative, as my colleague, the violinist and composer Hollis Taylor found, when she started analysing their marvellous improvisational music making.  Was our butcherbird visitor just curious, and yearning to see our interior decor?  No matter how clever these guys are, that seems unlikely.

Butcherbird on chair looking at me blind eye visible crop tighter.jpg

I suspect that this guy was looking for friends.  Perhaps some local folks who regularly fed him – maybe in a room with a sliding door, just off a deck?  Did his human buddies take care of him after his eye was injured?  I don’t know but I can say for sure he expected good things from us, and our kind.

BB inside head cocked cropped

Grey butcherbird expecting good things from humans

References

Brown, Matthews (2016) Clever crows: Investigating behaviour and learning in wild
Torresian crows (Corvus orru) and related Cracticids in a suburban environment, Doctoral thesis, Griffith University.

Hegemann, A, Hegemann, ED, Krone, O. (2007) “Successful rehabilitation and release with subsequently brood of a one-eyed Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo)” Berliner und Münchener tierärztliche Wochenschrift 120(5-6):1

Martin, Graham (2017) “What drives bird vision? Bill control and predator detection overshadow flight” Frontiers in Neuroscience 11

Tyrrell,Luke and Fernandez-Jericic, Esteban (2017) “Avian binocular vision: It’s not just about what birds can see, its also about what they can’t” PLOS One, Mar 29.

The sacred comes to the neighbourhood

kingfisher in pine tree 2 long bright

I was just nipping back from depositing a small part of our egg mountain with our friends across the road last week, when something odd flew across the drive – something I’d never seen at our place before.  It turned out to be this guy – a sacred kingfisher.

I don’t know why I was so surprised to see a kingfisher here, a kilometre or more and a couple of hundred metres up the hill from the creek.  Possibly because I do regularly see these lovely birds on my paddles in the Hawkesbury – hunting in the mangroves lining Milson’s Point; regurgitating pellets in full view of the expensive holiday homes in Calabash Bay or this young ‘un, hanging out near the public wharf at the questionably named Dusty Hole.

Juvenile kingfisher head cocked

Juvenile sacred kingfisher by Berowra Creek

Though I have repeatedly spotted them in bushland far from decent stretches of water, I managed to convince myself that they were fishing in the local tiny, slightly fetid pools.  But of course, ten minutes of googling gave me the correct answer.  Unlike the smaller azure kingfishers – the sacred mostly eat terrestrial prey – insects, skinks and even sometimes small birds. They rarely actually eat fish: there should be some kind of by-law, right?

Azure kingfisher amended crop

Azure kingfisher chilling out in the winter fog

Our visitor hung out for quite a while in the neighbours’ backyard, giving me the chance to race off for my camera and get into a possibly compromising position with my zoom lens propped up on the fence, pointing in the general direction of their living room windows.  The kingfisher was certainly aware a stalker was watching him from the bushes but didn’t seem too fazed.

Kingfisher looking at me close 2 crop square amended

“What are you looking at? Stalker!”

After my efforts to create bird habitat over the last few years, I felt a bit jealous that this gorgeous creature was choosing to hang out in our neighbour’s back garden.  However, I have to reconcile myself that their densely-planted native garden has the low shrubs these birds like to perch on while they’re waiting to dive down onto their prey in the leaf litter, without the loud woodwork projects, inquisitive chickens, trampoline and horde of neighbourhood kids that ramp up the action in ours.

Kingfisher wings out long amended

A wing stretch from our visiting sacred kingfisher

Sacred kingfishers are surprisingly mobile it seems.  They are the only kingfisher in these parts that is migratory.  Many (though not all) of the birds that live in the southern parts of Australia migrate each each to north Queensland and PNG – it’s a partial migrant like most other Australian migratory birds. I suspect that the local sacred kingfishers – or at least some of them – hang around in the winter.  Peter and Judy Smith (2012), keeping tabs on the arrival dates of migratory birds in Blaxland in the lower Blue Mountains, for over 30 years never saw a sacred kingfisher in the winter, but I’ve seen a couple on the Hawkesbury in the colder months – hanging out in America Bay in April and basking in the late afternoon light by Berowra Creek in July, right in the middle of winter.  Or “winter” as my British friends like to call it.

When I visited Wellington a couple of years ago I was surprised to see something very familiar hunting in a suburban park. A sub-species, Todiramphus sanctus vagans, that looks very very like our locals lives in New Zealand/Aotearoa as well.

NZ Kingfisher lit profile sharp bigger crop better

The New Zealand kingfisher

I started speculating on how the sacred kingfishers got over the Tasman but it seem their range is less about being blown off course on migratory treks than the epic distribution of another bird to which it is closely related – the collared kingfisher .  It’s a one less frequently seen in Australia – found only on coastlines in the northern half of Australia – and never seen at all by me so no pics. I got nothing!  Collared kingfishers (sometimes called the mangrove kingfisher) seem to be less generalist than the sacred, favouring mangroves and the forests immediately behind them – but has an impressive range.

In an article offering a genetic analysis of this species and its descendants in Australia, New Zealand and various Pacific islands, Michael Andersen and his colleagues describe as it as “the most widely distributed of the Pacific’s ‘great speciators’. Its 50 subspecies constitute a species complex that is distributed over 16 000 km from the Red Sea to Polynesia” (Andersen 2015).  The sacred seems to be one of the species that evolved from it.  Intriguingly collared kingfishers are no longer a migratory species, but Andersen speculates that “the migratory nature of T. sanctus is an evolutionary vestige of the ancestral Todiramphus lineage still exhibiting the colonization phase” (Andersen 2015).

Kingfisher and branches 4 long

One way or another, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the sacred in our neighbourhood.  After all, I’ve always known you can witness sacred on the water, or in the forest, or in the suburbs.  Not everywhere, but in more places than you would think – as long as you remember to look.  In this case – in the bushes.

Further References

Andersen, Michael, Hannah T Shult, Alice Cibois, Jean-Claude Thibault, Christopher E Filardi, Robert G Moyle (2015) “Rapid diversification and secondary sympatry in Australo-Pacific kingfishers” Royal Society Open Science Feb 2(2)

Debus, SJS (2007) “Avifauna of remnant bushland on the Twee Coast of Northern New South Wales” Sunbird 37(2)

Lindenmayer, David B. , Michael A. McCarthy, Hugh P. Possingham and Sarah Legge (2001) “A Simple Landscape-Scale Test of a Spatially Explicit Population Model: Patch Occupancy in Fragmented South-Eastern Australian Forests” Oikos, Vol. 92, No. 3 (Mar), pp. 445-458

Loyn, Richard H., Edward G. McNabb, Phoebe Macak, Philippa Noble (2007) “Eucalypt plantations as habitat for birds on previously cleared farmland in south-eastern Australia” Biological Conservation 137 533–548

Smith, Peter & Judy Smith (2012) “Climate change and bird migration in southeastern
Australia” Emu – Austral Ornithology, 112:4, 333-342

Kingfisher light against pine background square

Not just splendid; better than superb

One of the brilliant things about living in deepest suburbia, in one of the very furthest places you can plausibly describe as “in Sydney”, is that a bushwalk is always around the corner. The direct route to the station might offer glossy black cockatoos hanging upside down above the mechanic’s car park, a mismatched pair of king parrots or a lyrebird, scratching around in the scrub behind the public library.

Lyrebird

The library lyrebird

But if you’ve got a bit of time to spare, you can take that trip to the supermarket or the railway station through another world – no cars, no leafblowers and a whole heap of birds.  A couple of minutes off the main road and you’re out of the ridgeline’s suburban streets and into the bush on the Hawkesbury sandstone slopes below.  Okay, it might take an extra half an hour to fetch that litre of milk but you never know who you might meet on the way.

Monday’s 2k walk back from the station (via the first part of the Lyrebird track that connects to the Great North Walk) featured a surprisingly bold whipbird, a New Holland honeyeater, red-browed finches and a sacred kingfisher on the hunt.

But the highlight of the detour was these guys – a posse of variegated fairy wrens.

Variegated male and female back to back square

Beautiful male variegated fairy-wren in breeding colours with a jenny wren

I wouldn’t have paid much attention to the flash of blue in the undergrowth, if I hadn’t had a heads-up from my birdwatching brother to keep an eye out for these fellas.  They’re easily mistaken for the superb fairy-wrens, which are more commonly spotted in parks and gardens. Variegated fairy-wrens, it seems, prefer denser cover and a wider range of trees and shrubs in their hangouts.  This patch was burnt off in the last couple of years, so the undergrowth thick but only waist high.

Superb blue wren in tree old long

Superb fairy-wren I prepared earlier

Obviously when those obsequieous common names were handed out to Australian fairywrens, the variegated was indisposed. Seems a little unfair since, if anything, the breeding males of this species with their blue, chestnut and purple feathers are, if anything, lovelier, more superb and more exceedingly splendid than their flatteringly named relatives.

Variegated wrens grooming wing crop

Two females and a male variegated fairy-wren

Until recently, I laboured under the impression that a group like this consisted of a harem of females with a dominant male.  The interactions I saw on my micro-bushwalk, suggested that this might be less than accurate…

No need for assertiveness training for this jenny wren at least.

Turns out, fairy-wren groups consist of a dominant pair and a handful of younger birds, including non-breeding males.  Fairy-wrens, like many other Australian species, are cooperative breeders. While the breeding female builds the nest and incubates eggs, the rest of the group – often last year’s brood – chip in to feed the new chicks.  The young males are apparently particularly good value on the snack provision front.

Superb fairy-wrens have been described as “socially monogamous and sexually promiscuous” (a bit like a National Party politicians!).  Females sneak off to mate with the local male that wears his high-visibility, high risk blue plumage the longest (it’s not just the birdwatcher that find the iridescent blues and purples more appealing than the brown “eclipse” plumage that the male fairy-wrens sport in the off-season).  Sometimes as many as 3/4 of chicks can fathered by a male outside the pair. Recent research suggests that’s less true of the variegated fairy-wren.  Counter-intuitively, perhaps, variegated jenny wrens seem to be less likely to “play away” when there are lots of helpers close at hand to help raise the young.

Variegated two males and female crop

Two males and a female – no idea what’s going on here.

I can’t say how unsufferably smug I am that I get to see these cool little birds on what is, essentially, the school run.  They make a compelling argument for active transport.  I’ve resolved to turn my back on the car and cram as much gratuitous walking as I can into my days. As you can see, the outcome can be lovely, splendid, superb or perhaps even variegated!

Variegated wrens male + 2 long crop tighter

Chestnut shoulders on display – male and two female variegated fairy wrens

Additional references

Diane Colombelli-Negrel (2016) “Female splendid and variegated fairy-wrens display different strategies during territory defence” Animal Behaviour 119 99-110

Allison E. Johnson and Stephen Pruett-Jones (2018) “Reproductive promiscuity in the variegated fairy-wren: an alternative reproductive strategy in the absence of helpers?” Animal Behaviour 139 171-80

Red backed fairywren male good but fairly distant over shouldercrop

Your bonus fairy-wren for reading to the end – a red-backed fairy wren spotted at Oxley Common in Brisbane

The bowerbird bachelors

You know life has been intense when an incident from the backyard in spring doesn’t make it to the blog until the tailend of summer.  Our backyard re-enactment of “The Bachelor” had to be at least four months ago because satin bowerbirds only do their courtship routines from April for September.  The bowerbird dating show was a while ago now, but it was a truly memorable occasion.

A couple of times in the past we’ve found some blue items – pegs, bottle tops – in the bottom of the garden, collected together and rearranged over a period of days in a mysterious and seemly significant way.  But this time the assemblage was visible from our back verandah.  We had ringside seats for the show.

Though he was decked our in the iridescent black of a mature male – something that only happens when satin bowerbirds are at least seven years old – our bachelor seemed to be new at this.  There was no signs of a bower per se, just his collection of pretty objects in an unsalubrious corner of the garden.   I spent a day on the deck “working from home”, watching him shuffling them around. The milkbottle/yellow leaf combination seemed to be a particular favourite.

After quite a bit of this faffing around, he had a visit from a female.

Green bowerbird on a log square

Female satin bowerbird comes to look around

Cue bending, twisting, flapping of wings, along with some impressive eye bulging.

Well, impressive to me but possibly not to the visiting female.  I know it’s anthropomorphic but this face screams “get me out of here!”

And indeed, within minutes, a second male arrived on the scene, having surveyed the situation from afar.  He had a look around, somewhat dismissively it appeared, and then abruptly flew off with the female in tow. I almost heard him muttering out of the corner of his beak “C’mon babe”.

Our bachelor, thwarted, seemed to decide that inadequacies in his collection of blue objects was the key problem.  My kids had helpfully (if problematically from a plastic waste point of view) scattered some colourful gee-gaws around the back patio.  Our guy seemed concerned that one of the “house” wattlebirds might have an eye on the azure ornaments that were key to his sexual success.  It was on.

Bowerbird v wattlebird great 1 cropped

One distinctly irked bowerbird

Having put the little wattlebird firmly back in its box, our lovelorn male returned with additional trinkets to pimp his bower.  But to no avail.

There were other visitors that afternoon, but despite sustained and prurient interest, I saw no signs of sexual congress and the next day there was no repeat performance although the blue objects remained in their inauspicious arrangement by the woodpile.

However, a couple of weeks later the abandoned pile of treasures received another inspection from a “green” – presumably a young male who hadn’t yet earned the glossy violet-black feathers of a grown-up.

He seemed to be practising his courtship display, favouring golden twigs rather than the milk-bottle/leaf combo.  He had that eye-bulge down pat already though.  I wonder if we will see him back – perhaps in the mottled black-and-green plumage – for the next season of the Bowerbird Bachelors.

Motherhood on a windy day

Kid with mum distant 2 wide crop

Last year two collared sparrowhawk fledglings made it out of the nest high in our neighbour’s pine tree.  This year it was just one.  It’s been a lot quieter around here.  No squabbling over snacks.  No shuffling along branches side by side or pratfalls high in the canopy.  No hightailing it after a sibling chasing a feed.

There’s been more adult and parent bonding, though. I rarely saw the adults and offspring together last year.  But a few weeks ago, in windy weather, I got to see them hanging out low in the trees by our drive, sheltering from the tossing branches.

Juvenile against bark close crop

The juvenile looked, by turns, absurdly sleek and adult, and fluffy and completely gormless.  Mum (or dad) seemed to be wrestling with the same conceptual problem – how grown up is this chick really?

Typically when the sparrowhawks catch a juicy white-faced honey eater or wattlebird chick, they call out, over and over again.  I’m not sure if this the dinner bell for partner or offspring, or just triumphant territory claiming.  They swiftly pluck the small bird they’ve caught and then gorily and fairly rapidly consume it.

But on this particular day, the adult hawk sat very still, prey gripped tightly, not taking even a bite.  The youngster lurked awkwardly nearby, apparently not sure what to do next.

Kid with mum lower

Eventually mum (or dad), probably irked by the local amateur photographer, flew to a higher perch in the trees.  But her prey, plucked, pink and gleaming, was still untouched.

Mum with prey 2

She was waiting. Eventually Junior flew up to join her.

He still seemed clueless about what she wanted him to do – as indeed I was.  I’m willing to have a guess, though.

Adult sparrowhawks start by feeding their young little shreds of meat – the avian equivalent of pulled pork, I guess.  I have heard the adults teach the fledglings to catch little birds mid air by dropping little snippets of prepared flesh to them on the wing.  This youngster was definitely not in possession of that skillset.

Mum and kid with prey high 3

But I think dad (or mum) was trying to give the not-so-little little one a low-stakes chance to prep the dish for her (or him)self.  But it certainly wasn’t happening on this occasion.  Young blood had a good look, then stumbled past and took off, not even having a tiny go at flesh-tearing.

Juvenile from behind looking over shoulder crop

To be honest, I’m really pretty worried about this young one.  I’ve been working from home a lot lately, and every morning, I hear sparrowhawk calls, and I race up the drive with my camera.

But it’s just the adult I see, calling and calling and calling.

Further references

Barnes, C.P. and Debus, S. (2014) “Observations of the post-fledgling period of the collared sparrowhawk (Accipeter cirrocephalus)” from The Sunbird (2014) 44(1): 12–23

 

More sparrowhawk stories from our backyard

The end of the brush turkey plague? The battle of the baby birds….

There’s a collared sparrowhawk nesting in our garden…. or is it a goshawk…?

Our sparrowhawk summer

The teenagers start hunting for themselves… Sibling rivalry amongst the young serial killers….

Sex, nests and dogfighting