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December 19, 2020

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Art and the river

It’s been a long year, 2020, what with the apocalyptic fires, the global pandemic and higher education (my industry) going into meltdown. Between the smoke, the worrying, the working twice as hard as usual, the home schooling, the doom-scrolling, the worrying about children worrying, there hasn’t been a lot of time for blogging, although there have still been moments of tranquillity and wonder on the water and and in the garden.

A triangle - the front of a wooden kayak - bisects a very still river, which reflects foggy trees on either side.

But something really good did happen, towards the end of the year, worth getting out of my rut to blog about: my first photography exhibition. I had opportunity to take over Hornsby Council’s Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre – closed for much for 2020 during the pandemic – for a couple of weeks. The exhibition was called “Deerubbin at Dawn” and was part of Sydney’s annual Head On photography festival – which normally happens in May each year but was deferred this year, like so many other things. But thanks to Hornsby Council and heaps of curatorial help from my fabulous friend Jane Simon it did end up happening!

Looking down from the landing to the front entrance

Jacaranda blossom out front

The Verandah Room

Beautiful pressed ceilings

Hanging the exhibition

The lift lobby

I was really lucky to have my colleague and friend, Dr Ian Collinson, polymath and environmental humanities guy, write a catalogue essay for the exhibition that we also put on the wall in the grand front entrance:

Deerubbin at dawn: river lives on the Hawkesbury reveals Nicole Matthews’ familiarity with her neighbourhood, a familiarity that is a product of the conscious and frequent ‘looking’ that landscape photography demands of its practitioners. Taking many pictures of the same landscape over a protracted time—in different seasons, from different vantage points—produces images that evince an intimacy and a local knowledge, as well as epic and aesthetic grandeur. These are pictures of home not a remote wilderness, even though some may stir a romantic desire for the distant, the untouched and the awe-inspiring. The exhibition speaks to the interconnectedness of what we unhelpfully label culture and nature as though one could exist without the other.

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Taken from a kayak, these photographs alter our normal perspective as we see the River from a different viewpoint: from the inside out, from the River itself rather than a distant look-out. The images are also taken at an unfamiliar time of day. Through the floating eye of the camera we see the River at dawn with its soft, subdued colours and unique misty veils that tease and disappear as daybreak turns into day. Through this double shift of perspective and time the exhibition wants us to look again (and again) at what might be a familiar landscape to those who live in the embrace of the Hawkesbury River.

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Despite their romantic moments, these are pictures of a cultural landscape, landscape as everyday life as it is lived in a place, a life transformed by topography and a topography transformed by life. Deerubbin and its margins is an Indigenous ‘Country’, a national park, a suburb on Sydney’s northern edge, a landscape crafted by generations of human action and activity. The images speak to the labour and leisure that are intertwined and enabled by Deerubbin, of oyster-farming, the daily migration of commuters, and weekends spent sailing, motor-cruising or fishing. Humans are put in their place here; present but not overbearing, integral but not dominant.

Distant picture of a group of yachts and a buoy

A closeup of a decrepit boat with orange flowered weeds growing from its deck

Australasian Darter, wings out, facing a bleached out moon

Sandstone with a reflection and a small tree growing in front of a small cave

The front of a wooden kayak heading into a reflective misty scene

If you’d like to get more of a sense of the atmos of the gallery, here are some little videos with some of the soundtrack I had playing in the space to make it seem a little more… estuarine.

Two weeks of chatting to friends and blow ins, of zoom meetings with real-life mansion background, of selling a surprisingly large number of prints and 2021 Calendars (thank you generous pals and hooray for Christmas) and it was all over.

Four wires dropping against a white wall

The empty gallery

But not completely! Buoyed by how enjoyable I found the whole thing, and cheered that people seemed to like my pics, I have another, much smaller exhibition happening in the front room of the Dangar Island Depot from January 24-March 6 2021. It’s not many islands in a major river in Australia that are accessible by public transport but Dangar Island is one of them – jump off the train at Hawkesbury River Station (with its spanking new lifts, opened only last week) and onto the Brooklyn Ferry Service and you’re there.

And if you’re too far away to come along, you can buy prints of any of the photos on this post. Prices are between $60 and $350, depending on size. Or you can buy a 2021 calendar for $30. Check out the images in the calendar here:

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September 7, 2019

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kayaking, national parks, Native birds, raptors, Uncategorized, waterways

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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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

Casuarinas and saltmarsh at Berowra Creek

Little pied cormorant drying its wings

Reflections in Still Creek, opposite Crosslands

Rock reflections

More rock reflections

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

Female water dragon on a summer morning

Near Crosslands Camp

Into another world

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.

The upper reaches of Berowra Creek

Mangrove relections

Above Crosslands

More mangrove reflections

Illuminated trees by the campsite at Crosslands

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

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.

White-bellied sea eagle in the mist

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

Osprey staring at me

Osprey profile

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.

Wedge-tailed eagle in flight near Cowan Creek

Rabbit cowering in a decorative context

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

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March 30, 2019

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estuaries, habitat, juveniles, Native birds, territoriality

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The trouble with the younger generation

Egg the ancient kayak on the way to Joe Crafts Bay

It’s not often that the stars are in alignment for a midweek paddle but occasionally it happens. Children elsewhere, being forced to make music for 48 straight hours; the car (or “kayak transportation device” as I prefer to call it) sitting there unused and no pressing work engagements before 9 am on a Wednesday morning.

Berowra Creek was delightfully quiet, save for a handful of tinnies bearing estuarine commuters towards the wharf and the road to the big smoke roundabout 7 o’clock. I guess that’s rush hour on the Hawkesbury.

Pre-dawn rush at the Berowra Creek ferry

A peaceful river, low tide… time for the shy critters to come out of the mangroves and feast in the mud.

Striated heron getting ready to strike

And … stretch!

Juvenile Striated heron hunting silhouette with catch brightened

Juvenile striated heron with a tiny fish

I go past the mouth of Joe Crafts Bay quite regularly. It’s a magical place, blessed with reflections and rolling fog, and a secret creek filled with darting fish.

Looking to Joe Crafts Bay on a misty day

I’m always expecting to see something exotic there, like the critically endangered Eastern Curlew, visiting Australian coast during the northern winter after an epic migration from Russia and western China. Mostly I see bird-shaped sticks. But on this quiet morning, what I initially suspected to be a stick turned out not one, but two striated herons.

Juvenile striated heron pretending no one is looking

It’s pretty unusual to get a good look at these birds, described on one twitcher website, unnecessarily cruelly I think, as “a dumpy little heron with a large head“. Or if you were really mean you might describe it as a dumpy little heron with a jack-in-the-box neck.

Juvenile striated heron alarmed lightened 2 amended square

Juvenile striated heron with neck stretch

I normally spot striated herons only after I’ve already bugged them enough to burst out of their hiding places in the mangroves and fly off, disgruntled, down the river.

Adult striated heron perching at high tide

They are not given to making a lot of noise and hunt stealthily, perched on a low branch over shallow water or creeping along the shoreline looking for little fish, crabs or crustaceans. Interestingly, they sometimes also fish with bait – dropping a feather or leaf on the water to lure fish to the surface to investigate. These birds seem to be quite smart – researchers have even recorded youngsters playing with bugs, fruit and pieces of wood – perhaps practicing for bait fishing.

But for all their creativity, young herons like most juvenile birds, seem to be a little bit slow on the uptake when they unexpectedly encounter a mammal in a boat. And long may that stupidity continue.

Juvenile striated heron from behind square and lightened

Pensive looking juvenile striated heron

There was also an adult bird on this particular mudflat, clever enough to stay a lot further away.

Adult striated heron, macroryncha subspecies

And while the adult wasn’t incredibly impressed with me being in its territory, it was really very pissed off that it was having to share its patch of low tide real estate with a young heron. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Heron Conservation group – an impressively specialised body – African striated herons are so determined to defend their territory that you only find a couple of individuals in a 13 kilometre stretch of river. Our aggro Aussie adult, true to form, went after the youngster no less than three times while I was watching, chasing it off the prime spots on the mudflat with real venom.

Adult straited chasing juvenile crop long

Adult striated heron chasing off a juvenile off his feeding grounds

Not so the adult could hunt. Oh no. Youngster was finding fine pickings. But having cleared him out, the adult heron did this:

Adult striated heron freezing while white faced heron feeds

Striated heron pretending to be a statue

Nada. Played a game of statues. Or maybe pretended to be a stick for the benefit of nosy kayakers. It’s always pleasing to see birds behaving as expected. Here we see an “adult… freez[ing] when disturbed; standing motionless with their bill… at 45 degrees”

I was surprised to find that the striated heron, shy and retiring as it is, has been described as “one of the more cosmopolitan herons“, which suggests somehow it has well-used hand luggage tucked away in the mangroves somewhere and frequent flyer points. Sub-species (in an attractive range of colours) are found right around the world – from Africa, Madagascar, the islands of the Indian Ocean, East Asia, and South America.

Adult Striated heron walking toe out good pattern

Adult striated heron stepping out

Australian striated herons – both the east coast macroryncha, grey with perhaps a flush of wine colour on its underparts, and the reddish-brown stagnatilis which living in the north west – are a bit fussier than many overseas subspecies, living pretty much exclusively in coastal areas in and around mangroves. That’s quite different to the rarer but to my untutored eye somewhat similar looking black bittern that is found along forested rivers, like the Wyong River where I spotted this one, and even rivers much further inland.

Black bittern on the Wyong River

Juvenile striated heron in the fog

If you’re kind of fussy about where you live, Joe Crafts Bay seems a tremendous place to end up. No wonder the grumpy grownup wants to keep it to himself.

Joe Crafts Bay at its magical best

More adventures on the Hawkesbury

A visit with the eagles of Mooney Mooney Creek

Magic scenes on a cold and foggy day on Cowan Water

The silver river – up Marramarra Creek

Of gods and map readers – into Muogamarra National Park

Two sad islands, three whistling kites – a visit to Barr Island

Burnoff at Bujwa Bay

Alhambra on the Hawkesbury

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September 19, 2018

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estuaries, jellyfish, Uncategorized, Waste, waterways

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A ghostly tide in Calabash Creek

It’s true what they say: you can’t step into the same river twice. Especially if that river is really an estuary, briny water moving up and down between the mangroves.

Last time I was in Calabash Bay, back in February, it was full of stingrays. The bigger rays were over a metre from head to tail, the smallest a quarter of that size, sliding along the silty creek bed bottom at a surprising speed as I wrestled with the manual focus on my camera.

Little black cormorant

The entrance to Calabash Bay

Stingray in Calabash Creek

Upper reaches of Calabash Creek

But this Sunday, in the golden hour, I floated alongside a parade of hundreds of thousands of jellyfish. Not the jelly blubbers that gather in the bends and eddies of the Hawkesbury proper, orange and beefy and disturbingly solid under the paddle. These were moon jellies, aurelia aurata, diaphanous as mermaids’ undergarments, their shadows on the sandy bottom more substantial than themselves, tumbling and drifting downstream.

A flock of moon jellies

Moon jelly and reflection

Moon jellies flaunting their horseshoe shaped gonads

Stinging tentacles on display?

They’re common enough, moon jellies. They’re easy to see and easy to study because they like to hang out where we humans do. Harbours and jetties give them somewhere to latch onto in the polyp phase of their intriguing two part life cycle. And blooms of millions of the medusa form – like the one I saw this weekend – are not unusual either, especially in enclosed and not too salty waters, where the nutrient level is high, the oxygen level low and predators are few. But I’d never seen so many moon jellies in one place before, and never seen them here. Perhaps the stiff south easterly breeze and a rising tide blew them implausibly high into the tree-lined reaches of Calabash Creek.

Burns creek during a burnoff

Maybe it was a coincidence, but along with the mysterious tide of jellyfish, Calabash Creek and the trees and rocks that flanked it were draped with garish green algae. The creekbed and mangrove roots were coated in it and dried mats of it hung like fragments of ripped clothing from low branches. Water quality is much better in the Hawkesbury these days, but it seems like Calabash Bay is a hotspot for algal blooms, both toxic and less so, thanks to sewage outfalls upstream and a legacy of nutrients from earlier, dirtier days buried in the sediment.

Whatever the cause, the creepy drapery and the feeling of being entirely surrounded by slowly moving, half-invisible jellies lent an otherworldly feel to these quiet waters.

Whitefaced heron in a monochrome landscape

Dried mats of algae looking like torn clothes

Algae draped over a rock

Baby mangroves

So I guess I can’t say for sure whether you get to step in the same river twice. My feet never went near that water. They were tucked up in the canoe with no chance of touching ghostly jellies, stinging tentacles or strangling slime.

Burnoff sunset over Berowra Creek

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July 25, 2016

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kayaking, national parks, Native birds, Uncategorized, waterways

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Sunday afternoon service at the Church of the Double Bladed Paddle

7 degrees at daybreak and good company the evening before: no chance of making it out for dawn this weekend. So it was the afternoon service for me in the Church of the Double-Bladed Paddle. Down the end of our street, the Hawkesbury in the golden hour.

Beautiful cirrus sky and skyline

Golden bubble water crop horizontal

Magnificent eucalypts and winter sky

Afternoon sun and haze at the entrance to Calabash Bay

Reflections in Calabash Bay

Seaplane in Berowra Creek

A seaplane was parked out front of the ritzy Berowra Waters Restaurant, a few devotees of fine dining lingering over white linen, but otherwise the river was quiet. Weekenders emptied of their winter visitors, off home to find socks and check homework. Some stirrings in the sandy creek bed – stingrays? – but no fishermen and hardly a fish.

Berowra Waters Restaurant in the late afternoon

Seaplane taking diners home

Seaplane in Berowra Creek

Some sun worshippers were receiving the blessing of the last rays on the southern shores of Calabash Bay.

Curious artistic shadows on sandstone

White faced heron hunting in Calabash Creek

Pied kingfishers taking in the rays

Sandstone sculpture

Strange mix of shadows and cormorant wings

And then, a true glimpse of the sacred. The sacred kingfisher, that is. I’d suspected they might be found around here, even in the winter. There was that green flash out of the corner of my eye as I scrambled over the rocks onto Bar Island, and the briefest of glimpses, framed by mangrove leaves, my camera hopelessly buried, one morning in Bujwa Bay.

But this glorious creature showed no inclination to move from his place in the sun, calmly accepting the adoration of passing paddlers.

Sacred kingfisher

But even a sacred kingfisher can be profane. I’m reverently gazing, barely taking a breath, and the big guy takes the opportunity to have a lightning fast chunder. There’s a familiar doggo look on his face as he sits there on his sunlit stick recovering.

Sacred kingfisher getting ready for a multicoloured yawn

Sacred kingfisher regurgitating

Kingfisher in recovery mode

But you expect veneration anyway, right, mate? And you’ll get it too.

Sacred kingfisher other side 2 wide tighter

Last winter in Calabash Bay…

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July 7, 2016

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anthropocene, Biodiversity, Fire, national parks, Native birds, waterways

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Burn-off at Bujwa Bay

The only trouble with living in paradise (apart from the long commute) is combustibility. Our gorgeous view – mile after mile of incendiary eucalypts. So the still, dry days and nights of autumn were thick with smoke, not from the big bad one we’re dreading, but hazard reduction burns in the bush all round the town.

Dawn in paradise: a winter’s view from the back deck

The same view at sunset during the burn-off

Dawn at Calabash Bay

Last time I went down to Bujwa Bay, it was the kind of cool and breathless day that must make the Rural Fire Service very very happy. Mist hovered over the water in a bright line of morning light. Forty minutes of silent paddling past the sleeping celebrities of Berowra Waters and I was round Oaky Corner and into the sunshine.

A glassy morning in Bujwa Bay

Patterns in the sand in a nearby beach

Mist blows out of the bay

Golden light and mist at Calabash Bay

In the quiet there was a cryptic crunching noise. Eventually, I spotted the pair of glossy black-cockatoos hidden amongst at the shore-line casuarinas. My sense of being some kind of bird whisperer evaporated when, after fifteen minutes fooling around trying to get a decent shot of the cockies, I looked up to meet the eye of a bloody great big white-bellied sea eagle sitting directly above me. And then, just round the corner, his pal taking in the rays. They’re not stupid these birds, parked in the sunniest spot on the bay.

Mist and mangroves in Bujwa Bay

Glossy black-cockatoo eating casuarinas

Sea-eagle basking in the morning sun

White bellied sea-eagle takes off

Having bonded with the local bird-life, when I heard about the burn-off, I was worried. What happens to it all when the bush goes up in smoke?

Egg the kayak entering Bujwa Bay after the burn-off

Looking up Bujwa Bay to the burn-off

Red sandstone rock formations

Ripples at dawn

Drooping bark and grasstrees for crop square

Back-burnt grasstrees at Bujwa Bay

It’s not all bad news.

Harry Rechter describes birds enjoying a feast during a controlled burn in Brisbane Waters National Park, not so far from here.

“Although fuel loads in the… heath and woodland were high, and flames soared above the tallest trees and shrubs, birds moved easily in front of and above the fire to appear minutes later on the blackened vegetation to feed on less fortunate insects and small lizards”.

I missed the raptors and the insectivores that no doubt turned up at Bujwa Bay at the first sign of smoke, looking for Cajun-style chow. But chances are these blackened grasstrees will be bursting into flower next time I paddle by. I might see lyrebirds too, raking newly formed clearings. Ground-feeders and grain-eaters – corellas for instance – return in force after fires have passed. The little insectivores – thornbills, wrens and robins – that build nests close to the ground don’t miss the scorched canopy, and enjoy the bugs that flourish on the flush of new growth. The carbonised shrubbery might even give me the chance of catching a blurry LBB or two on film.

After the burn-off: partly scorched eucalypts

It’s a nice idea to think that the burn-offs that protect the town are a boon for the local plants and animals too. And there’s a euphonious catchphrase that goes with that idea: “pyrodiversity begets biodiversity”. Fire incinerates the garden escapes and wakes the soilbank’s astounding store of dormant seeds. If we burn little and often, it’s been thought, we make a mosaic of habitats: patches of open space and newly germinating seeds; places burnt a few years back; and refuges long unburnt, full of craggy trees, hollow logs and dense undergrowth.

Scorched eucalypt canopy

Dried out rock orchids at Bujwa Creek

Pyrodiversity is popular amongst land management folks, and there’s some evidence that it works, at least in some places. But not everyone buys the story that the frequent fires that protect people and property suit other critters too. Out in the mallee, near where I grew up, a fire and biodiversity project run by Deakin and LaTrobe universities has been laboriously checking the idea out.

For all the mallee’s underground lignotubers, ready to reshoot after fire, other parts of the ecosystem – large stretches of spinifex grass, for one, that shelter dragons and legless lizards – can take fifty or more years to return after a burn. All of which makes me feel tremendously guilty about the swiftly abandoned spinifex-covered cubbies that my brother and sister and I used to make in the mallee scrub out the back of our house. We will never know how many now-extinct species we displaced.

Away from regrets about the trail of ecological devastation I left in childhood and back to burn-off related angst. The research in these arid areas suggests it’s not pyrodiversity that’s important for a species-rich environment but having enough country that’s reached the right stage of maturity since the last fire. As a person in mid-life, it pleases me to say that older vegetation often seems to sustain more species of birds, mammals and reptiles, including the rare ones. Even birds that like paddocks and open plains prefer unburnt land. Some reptiles favour recently fired landscapes, but plant communities that haven’t been burnt for a decade or two harbor the richest variety of lizards and snakes.

Red dirt and paper daisies, Katarapko National Park

Habitat or portal to another universe, Katarapko National Park

Pigface at Katarapko National Park in the mallee

I tried and failed to find the experts on biodiversity and fire on Hawkesbury sandstone. But researchers studying both subtropical Queensland and foothill forests in Victoria said similar things. A varied landscape is important, but

the richness of frugivore, insectivore and canopy forager assemblages is driven by the presence of structurally complex vegetation and old-growth canopy trees, which are more likely to be present in areas that have not experienced fire for a prolonged period of time (Burgess 2016)

Paston and colleagues put their conclusion bluntly: “prescribed fire is of little utility for the broadscale conservation of biodiversity” (2011, 3238).

And it seems, for birds at least, smaller patches of unburnt country won’t really do – it’s larger areas that haven’t seen fire for a while that are rich in species. One bunch of researchers found that little islands of older habitat surrounded by new growth was grabbed by one or two aggressive predatory or colonial birds, rather than harbouring lots of different critters. One recent paper, written about arid areas, sum it up:

Our results suggest a shift in current fire management thinking… is needed, away from a focus on creating small, unburnt patches towards preserving large, intact, unburnt areas (Berry 2015 493)

Burnt crown and dark silhouette from distance

What does all this mean for Bujwa Bay?

There was nothing moving in the incinerated trees on the ridgeline as I made my way up the creek at high tide, but then, it was early and damn chilly. Even the herons had given up on fishing and were huddled in the trees, keeping their feet dry.

But the damp fringes of the mangroves were alive with silvereyes and yellow-faced honeyeaters, and I heard the plunk of a sacred kingfisher diving for breakfast. Gullies are especially valuable habitats for birds at the best of times. If they’re protected from fire by burning on the slopes nearby they can be an even better retreat when that big one comes. The top of the creek was lush and green. I can only guess that the rangers and RFS know what they’re doing.

Chilly looking white-faced heron

Striated heron taking a break

Great black cormorant

In the light of recent research, Taylor and his colleagues comment dryly “current fire management for avifaunal conservation may require substantial refinement” (Taylor, 2012, 525).

But let’s not fool ourselves. Around here at least, fire management is not for the avifauna. It’s for me, and people like me, who choose to live high on a hill, surrounded by the beautiful, burnable bush.

Egg the kayak in morning light

Morning mist on Berowra Creek

Jet trail and tree silhouette

Additional references. Because the whole thing is really is quite complicated and you might want to check I didn’t get it totally wrong.

Berry, L. Lindenmeyer, D, Driscoll, D. (2015) “Large unburnt areas, not small unburnt patches, are needed to conserve avian diversity in fire-prone landscapes” Journal ofApplied Ecology Vol 52 Issue 2

Burgess, Emma, and Maron, Martine (2016) “Does the response of bird assemblages to fire mosaic properties vary among spatial scales and foraging guilds?” Landscape Ecology March 2016, Volume 31, Issue 3,pp 687–699

Doty, A., Stawski, C, Nowack, J., Bondarenco, A. (2015) “Increased lyrebird presence in a post-fire landscape” Australian Journal of Zoology 63,9–11

Hope Ben (2012) “Short-term response of the long-nosed bandicoot, Perameles nasuta, and the southern brown bandicoot, Isoodon obesulus obesulus, to low-intensity prescribed fire in heathland vegetation” Wildlife Research 39(8) 731-744

Korczynskyj, Luke and Byron B. Lamont (2005) “Grasstree (Xanthorrhoea preissii) recovery after fire in two seasons and habitats” Australian Journal of Botany, 53 509-515

Kelly, Luke T. Andrew F. Bennett, Michael F. Clarke, and Michael A. McCarthy (2015) “Optimal ﬁre histories for biodiversity conservation” Conservation Biology, Volume 29, No. 2, 473–485

Lindenmayer, David B., Wade Blanchard, Lachlan McBurney, David Blair, Sam C. Banks, Don A. Driscoll, Annabel L. Smith and A. M. Gill (2014) “Complex responses of birds to landscape-level fire extent, fire severity and environmental drivers” Diversity and Distributions 20, 467–477

Nimmo, D, Kelly, L., Spence-Bailey, L, Watson, S.J. Taylor, R.S., Clarke, M.F and Bennett, A.F. (2012) “Fire Mosaics and Reptile Conservation in a Fire-Prone Region” Conservation Biology 27 (12)

Pastro, Louise L., Christopher R. Dickman and Mike Letnic (2011) “Burning for biodiversity or burning biodiversity? Prescribed burn vs. wildfire impacts on plants, lizards and mammals” Ecological Applications Vol. 21, No. 8, pp. 3

Robinson, Natasha, Leonard, Steven, Bennett, Andrew, Clarke, Michael (2016) “Are forest gullies refuges for birds when burnt? The value of topographical heterogeneity to avian diversity in a fire-prone landscape” Biological Conservation 200, pp.1-7

Sitters, Holly , Di Stefano, Julian, Christie, Fiona, Swan, Matthew, York, Alan (2016) “Bird functional diversity decreases with time since disturbance” Ecological Applications, 26(1), pp. 115–127

Smith, Annabel, C.Michael Bull, Don Driscoll (2013) “Successional specialization in a reptile community cautions against widespread planned burning and complete fire suppression”Journal of Applied Ecology 2013, 50, 1178–118

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February 19, 2016

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Alhambra on the Hawkesbury

The last few times I passed by Bujwa Bay, on my way downriver from Berowra Waters, it was shrouded in mist.

On the way to Bujwa Bay

Mist blowing out of Bujwa Bay

A misty morning on Berowra Creek

But last Sunday, in the golden light of late afternoon, there was a revelation.

I’m familiar with the Hawkesbury’s sculpture parks and sandstone art galleries. But the fact that Berowra Creek had well preserved fragments of an ancient Moorish fortress – well, that was news to me.

The “sculpture park” on the northern shore of Long Island, the Hawkesbury

River rainbow, in Berowra Creek

Honeycomb formations in a cave above Bujwa Bay

Sandstone art gallery in Smith’s Creek

When I went home and told RB I’d seen something very like the famous stucco inscriptions of the Alhambra on a estuarine cliffside at the end of Berowra Waters Road, his comment was “You’re barking!”. And he’s probably right.

Honeycomb weathering in sandstone on Bujwa Bay

After all, the Alhambra is an artistic jewel, a masterwork of European Islam, preserved over the centuries after the Moors themselves were driven first into the mountains and then out of Spain altogether. Its delicate carved plasterwork miraculously survived Christian conquerors, dodgy architectural restorers, squatters and tourists. And the sandstone of Bujwa Bay is just, you know, rock.

“The sea” in the Alhambra

Stucco inscriptions

The Alhambra from a distance

Stucco and tile in the Alhambra

Stucco inscription at the Alhambra

But I’ve been reading about “thing power” and it’s given me a whole new angle on inanimate objects. “Thing Power!” – sounds like a killer bathroom cleaner that will sort out all the disturbing life-forms, named and unnameable, in your shower cubicle.

But according to Jane Bennett, its “a creative not-quite-human force capable of producing the new [that] buzzes within the history of the term ‘nature’ ” (2010, 118). Electrons, microbes, minerals, waste, all busily making and shaping things, inside, around, through, against and despite humans and their fancy-pants plans. She reckons things and people rub along or against each other in a pattern that’s “not random or unstructured, but conforms to the strange logic of vortices, spirals and eddies” (2010, 118).

Alveoli weathering in sandstone

Stone lacework on Bujwa Bay

Kooky as it sounds, this is not a bad description of how the Bujwa Bay Alhambra came into the world, according to a paper coauthored, in a way that pleases my penchant for magical thinking, by a geologist from Granada, home of the famous palace.

Honeycomb weathering like this happens in all sorts of porous rocks, around the world – from Antarctica to Jordan – and maybe even on the surface of Mars. It might seem like hollows would form in weaknesses in the rock, but it’s not necessarily so. Blistering heat, frost, chemical weathering and rain are all in the frame – with maybe a little help from the odd patch of algae or lichen. But mostly it’s about salt and wind.

Salty water – in this case from seaspray – seeps into the rock and crystallises, making tiny fractures. If there’s plenty of water, salt crystals forms on the outside surface to form efflorescence, a mineral flowers blooming on a cliffside or a cellar wall or a garden fence. But the real damage is done deep in the rock.

According to Rodriguez and friends, once a depression is formed in the rockface, wind eddies and swirls inside the concave parts of the stone. Faster breezes mean more evaporation and a super-saturated salt solution, meaning more salt crystals and more fretted stone. Eventually the rockface becomes lacework, without any intervention by a rock lacemaker.

Alhambra rocks 1 crop long

The other name for honeycombed rock is alveoli. It’s stone with lungs. Made of mineral flowers. Not alive (or mostly not alive – sorry algae) but doing complicated and beautiful things.

Not immortal, invisible, unfathomable. In fact, as fathomable as the waters of Bujwa Bay at low tide, that is, knee deep to a heron. Just exceedingly hard to grasp.

And that’s not just me banging my head against a corroding brick wall of “Salt weathering: a selective review” – the geologists are still bickering over exactly how it works. In Bennett’s (possibly slightly loopy) words, it’s vital matter, “hard to discern… and, once discerned, hard to keep focused on. It is too close and too fugitive, as much wind as thing” (119). Or perhaps, in this instance, both wind and thing.

A crab wondering what I’m on about, on a beach near Bujwa Bay

References

Jane Bennett 2010 Vibrant Matter, Duke University Press

Eric Doehne (2002) “Salt Weathering: a selective review” from Natural Stone, Weathering Phenomena, Conservation Strategies and Case Studies. Vol 205, 51-64, Geological Society Special Publication

Carlos Rodriguez-Navarro, Eric Doehne,Eduardo Sebastian (1999) Origins of honeycomb weathering: The role of salts and wind, GSA Bulletin; August 1999; v. 111, no. 8; p. 1250–1255

Huinink, H. Pel, L, Kopinga, K. 2004 “Simulating the growth of tafoni” Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 29 1225-33

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October 4, 2015

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anthropocene, Backyard birds, kayaking, national parks, Native birds, natural history, Waste, waterways

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Encounters with eagles

May I present this week’s sea eagle?

Sea eagle and a view of Budgewoi Lake

Sea eagle retreating to a pole to eat its fish

As yet on my estuarine adventures, I haven’t seen a score of sea-eagles on a single morning (although I can imagine a battalion of them, flying in formation), but an encounter with an eagle has become as much a regular feature of my kayaking expeditions as the ubiquitous white-faced heron. Those cryptic little passerines in the riverside scrub are hard to spot even if you’re not short sighted and half deaf. So three cheers for the white-bellied sea eagle “large and conspicuous” “easily sighted when… soaring… in search of prey“. Haliaeetus leucogaster, you are the middle aged canoeist’s friend.

There was the eagle we saw battling it out with a pair of whistling kites over fishing rights on a fabulous family excursion across the Hawkesbury from Brooklyn, across the surf-line and up the Patonga River. According to Wikipedia, sea eagles harass smaller raptors like kites in hopes of stealing their prey. Not today, Josephine. This eagle was bested by the lowly kite, unwilling to relinquish a top notch fishing spot. I need to listen to my own advice to my students – don’t believe Wikipedia!

Sea eagle about to launch

Sea eagle soaring in for fish

Whistling kite defending its ground

White bellied sea eagle beats a retreat

Whistling kite aka archaeopteryx

Whistling kite coming in for the kill

Whistling kite hunting in Patonga Creek

An eagle even made a guest appearance on a modest little paddle down the end of our street. This was one mellow raptor, its apparent indifference to poorly coordinated amateur photographers splashing around trying to get a good shot belying its rep as a “shy and easily disturbed species“. Ruth, my companion on the water that day, had seen a sea eagle, earlier, on the very same bare branch, while bushwalking along the ridge above. Same bird or just a popular perch?

Sea eagle at Berowra Creek

An eagle eye

Casuarina forest on the edge of the salt marsh on Berowra Creek

Berowra Creek in morning mist

Board walk through the saltmarsh near Berowra Creek

Pied cormorant about to be eaten by a shark

Since the rule for my stolen Saturday morning paddles is no more than half an hour in the car, I’ve frequently had this very thought as I spot yet another sea eagle. Same bird? Am I being stalked by just one glorious if persistent raptor who’s somehow taken a fancy to my little craft, charmed perhaps by its avian-friendly name? Or is the Hawkesbury awash with sea eagles?

Even the Department of Environment in its definitive run down on Haliaeetus leucogaster doesn’t seem super sure. Their guesstimate of 500 pairs across the whole country is based on a one for every 40 kilometre of Australian coastline would pretty much mean that all the eagles in my photos are the same dude (or dudette – the females are larger but I find it’s kind of hard to tell if a bird is small or if it’s just far away).

Either way, I’m 100% sure this week’s eagle is a new one, since I saw it at the start of a paddle down Wallarah Creek, seventy ks north of here. The creek wends its quiet way through bushland past the Wyong North sewage treatment plant to Budgewoi Lake. What with my burgeoning interest in taking blurry pictures of distant bird-life, it seems I will be spending more and more time hanging around sewage farms – they seem to be the go-to venue for the would-be twitcher.

White-bellied sea eagle struggling with a supersized meal

The Budgewoi eagles seem a bit more coy than the Berowra locals, as you can tell from this dodgy pic on my maxed out zoom. Or maybe it’s just that this sea-eagle didn’t want to share her supersized snack.

Which, after observing the consequences of fraternisation with humans for other birds I saw on my way up Wallarah Creek, is probably a good thing.

Pied cormorant strangled by a fishing line

Female australasian darter tangled up in fishing line

Up until recently, it was thought that carelessly discarded bait, hooks and line were the big killers of waterbirds, and there have been some efforts made to make sure fisherfolk dispose of their scraps in the rubbish rather than leaving them lying around – not such a big ask really. Some have even argued for the use of biodegradable line and hooks that will rust away (eventually).

But efforts to get fishermen to clean up their act have had surprisingly little impact on the number of waterbirds being injured or killed by fishing tackle. In fact, research by academics and wildlife rescue organisations in South Australia and New South Wales suggest that the vast majority of birds that get entangled or hooked – often pelicans, but also plovers, gulls and stilts – get caught up when they are close to people actually fishing.

After my trip up Wallarah Creek I can see why. As I passed riverfront houses with their landing slips and jetties I saw pelicans lounging on back lawns and an excited egret being thrown small fry by a local. Even the striated heron, normally shy, flew off in the direction of human habitation, not the other way. The birds around here are familiar with humans, their tinnies, their by-catch and, unfortunately, their fishing lines.

Greater egret coming in to land

Greater Egret hunting in Budgewoi Lake

Wallarah Creek

Striated heron

Casuarinas in Wallarah Creek

Scary paperbarks

Existential graffiti channelling the thoughts of the strangled cormorant

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July 13, 2015

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Rest day on the Tour de Hawkesbury

Sky kayaking

Plunging down the switchbacks of Berowra Waters Road with a canoe strapped on top as a weekend dawn breaks is a hair raising experience, for a newbie driver like me anyway. At any moment, heavy breathing MAMILs (Middle Aged Males In Lycra according to our friend Bruce Ashley, author of Bike It! Sydney and Cycling around Canberra) might suddenly loom out of the fog in the middle of the not-quite-two-lane road.

They’ve swooped down through Galston Gorge, across the only bridge, passed swiftly through Arcadian horsey country, and after a moment of quietly gazing out at the marina as they cross the ferry, they’re battling the steep 200 metres ascent up to the ridge. It would seem rather cruel if, after all that effort, my kayak shot off the roof in an emergency stop and impaled them before they got that well-earned coffee.

Scary as this drive is, it’s not quite as nerveracking as coming back from the Hawkesbury up the Old Pacific Highway on a misty morning – a journey that is begging to be made into a terrifying but addictive computer game called something like “Drive of Doom” or “Death Dodgems”.

Peering through the billowing mist round the hairpin bends, you hope you’ll spot the scattered packs of labouring MAMILs in time to slide right, all the while praying that a mob of motorbikes doesn’t choose that moment to come roaring up from behind to wipe themselves out on your rear window. Or that an oncoming vehicle doesn’t take the next tight corner wide and smash into you headlong. The reward if you win a game is obvious: a triumphant stop high above the clouds at “Pie in the Sky“, a place where the lambs lie down with the lions, or at least, the road cyclists eat pies with the bikies.

But not this weekend. Not a single specimen of the MAMIL, keystone species in our local ecosystem, to be seen. What’s going on around here?

Eventually, as I hauled the kayak off the car and wrestled it into the water, I worked it out. The MAMILs have been up all night watching the Tour de France. At two o’clock in the morning they were gripped as Mark “The Manx Missile” Cavendish floated past Andre “The Gorilla” Greipel to claim his first stage win in two years, his twenty sixth stage in the Tour. And they’re still curled up in bed, knees bent under the covers, dreaming they’re Australia’s next Cadell Evans. Middle aged, but still contenders.

Quiet river

Start of the journey

The river was very very quiet too. In February this year, I ventured for the first time into the brackish winding creeks that feed Calabash Bay. It was fish paradise. Despite my complete indifference to fish as a meal, pet or leisure pursuit, the sheer numbers of tiny transparent spratlings leaping from the water and darting between the mangrove roots was eye opening.

Even nearly twenty years ago, just after the high point of algae blooms and floating maritime corpses in Berowra Creek, research into estuary processes discovered twenty nine species of fish up and down the water. Marra Marra Creek, in the lower reaches, with its saltmarshes and long stretch of mangroves, was the richest, but even upstream there were flathead and flounder, gobies and mullet and perchlets, silver biddies and pacific blue eye.

But this weekend, nothing. I went to see the fish and it was out.

Watery abstract

Mangrove edge

Seagrass and mangrove in Calabash Bay

Misty abstract

One azure kingfisher was so weak with hunger it sat exhausted on a waterside twig in full view long enough for me to take a numerous terrible blurry photographs. If I keep going out in these lean times, I may finally get the chance to take a sharp, closeup shot of an emaciated glinting blue bird spiralling slowly downriver on its back.

Despite my glass-half-empty-and-probably-tainted-with-nuclear-fallout tendencies, I’m pretty sure the lack of visible fish is a natural thing, part of the cycle of life. Most of the inhabitants of the creek spawn in spring and summer, so the tiddlers of the summertime shallows are no doubt happily traversing deeper waters now, invisible and unknowable to those who drift involuntarily into unconsciousness at the mere mention of rod, bait or tackle.

Looking back to Berowra Creek from Calabash Bay

Evidence of the existence of boaties

There must have been a few fish around, I guess, along with the amphipods, the isopods, the molluscs and the worms. I saw a few blokes slumped gloomily in tinnies, a handful of great cormorants and the contractual obligation pair of white faced heron in every cove and mudflat.

My ship building neighbour rates his sequence of ancient clapped out Mercedes according to the number of cows featured in the interior trim (“a two cow Merc”, “a four cow Merc” etc). I’m thinking I should start rating my canoeing trips similarly, according to the number of white-faced herons I see during the day. This Saturday was, by my calculation, at least a nine-heron day, and that’s not giving myself extra points for seeing the birds in pairs, hedgehog like in their full breeding regalia.

Hedgehog heron

Great cormorant in breeding plumage

White faced heron pair in breeding regalia

But all in all, there still plenty of solitude to be found out there in the mist. I’m not sure, but I may have discovered a new form of white-water canoeing. It may not be high-octane, but it’s got to be higher energy than watching Gabriel Gate on late night TV. I think I like it.

Casuarina glauca?

Pioneer mangrove

White water canoeing, right?

Round the corner from Bujwa Bay

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February 19, 2015

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Backyard birds, Geology, national parks, Native animals, Weeds

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What’s at the bottom of the garden?

Where does our backyard end? The unwary burglar or, more plausibly, brush turkey fetishist leaping over the back fence and finding themselves falling off the small but perfectly formed cliff between our place and our downhill neighbours might think the answer obvious. But clearly, property boundaries don’t mean a lot to the brush turkeys or the bowerbirds. As far as they’re concerned, our backyard is just a part of Berowra Valley National Park with better snacks.

And since our yard is, in essence, a part-time storm drain, you could say that this is where our backyard ends:

Waterfall into Berowra creek after rain

Dusty Hole marina, Berowra Creek

Sometimes the view from the deck seems like a theatre backdrop, an artful two dimensional screen behind our suburban dramas. Every evening, the cockies, wheeling and screeching, burst through the scenic backcloth. Last weekend, a bit more quietly (bar the kayak-onto-roofrack related cursing) I did the same, plunging into the dawn mist towards the very bottom of the garden, the watery end point of our backyard.

Sam’s Creek in the mist

In the 1990s, Berowra Creek was not a good place to be a fish. Sewage outflows from waterside communities at Dusty Hole and Berowra Waters and the landlubber suburbs to the south meant algal blooms, brick red water and floating fish. As the cheery Hornsby Shire Biodiversity Plan ten years back noted “Some parts of the tributary creeks in the Berowra Creek catchment feature weed invasion, garden plants and waste, streambed siltation, rubbish and gross pollutants from stormwater drains, bank erosion, undercutting, tree death and poor water quality” (2006, 28). It’s enough to make a gardener think long and hard about what might wash down the hill in the next heavy rain.

Thankfully there’s a whole lot less nitrogen going into the creek these days largely thanks to better poo processing. I don’t have a lot of interest in fish. I don’t eat them, they make rubbish cuddly pets and they lay very tiny eggs far too infrequently. But even to my disinterested eye, the backwaters and mangrove flats of the estuary look like fish paradise. Okay, fish paradise probably doesn’t feature stingrays, cormorants or osprey, but you get my point.

Fishermen (I use that term advisedly) out well before the birds

Welcome swallow still in fluffy slippers and bathrobe

Male and female Chestnut Teal completing their morning ablutions

Fishermen get up earlier than kingfishers, it seems. People who say they’re “up with the birds” or even, in that eloquent Australianism “up before sparrow fart”, are clearly lying through their teeth. The welcome swallows were barely out of the fluffy slippers and the ducks were still brushing their hair and cleaning their teeth, but the fishermen of the Hawkesbury were already out on the water, lurking in quiet bays or drifting mid-channel like tinny Mary Celestes.

The feathered fisherfolk only seemed to appear after the mist began to rise. I’m not sure whether I can attribute that to poor avian night vision or my water spattered multifocals. You’ve got to assume the rufous night heron can see in the dark, but I only saw it scoop up a take-away in a kind of disgruntled way, after some annoying canoeist with an inadequate zoom lens made a nap in the mangroves untenable, and that was long after sunrise.

Mist rising over Berowra Valley National Park

Very patient and faintly curious juvenile white faced heron

Into Joe Craft Bay

Mist rising

White faced heron fishing

Rufous night heron trying to get some shut eye

Miffed night heron, off for a take-away on the way homee

For all the wildlife in these parts, that sharp edged snap of an azure kingfisher sparkling in flight is as much beyond me as a decent crop of salad potatoes, it seems. But I’m not going to complain. Over the last few weeks I’ve seen plenty of boats with girls’ names, but I haven’t seen too many Rubys, Calistas or Beverleys actually messing about in boats. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden and there are certainly plenty of fish, but there don’t seem to be quite as many fishwives. Seems like it’s a rare privilege to be Her Outdoors.