The Big Twitch

by Sean Dooley

  To get to Phillip Island, which is a protected area, one needs to be accompanied by a registered guide, and mine was a direct descendant of Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian. I would happily have paid double. Being guided by someone with such a historic surname added a touch more cachet and romance to the experience, a bit like being shown around Stratford-on-Avon by a Shakespeare, the battlefield of Marengo by a Napoleon, or the White House by a Lewinsky. There is no landing berth at Phillip Island and Mike had to negotiate his boat as close as he dared beneath the cliffs in the most sheltered part of the island. A dinghy transferred us to shore where, between waves, we had to jump over to the rock platform then haul ourselves up a series of ropes to the top of a rather daunting cliff.

  Phillip Island is a simply awesome sight. In the early days of settlement someone stupidly let goats and rabbits loose on the uninhabited island. They went on a feeding rampage, reducing the vegetation cover to virtually zero, leaving an almost lunar landscape which forms a dramatic contrast to the swirling ocean below. In recent times the grazers have been removed and an active revegetation program is underway, but it will take decades to return the island to what it once was. Fortunately rats never made it here and the island is chockers with breeding seabirds which have retained a certain boldness about the presence of humans, so that you can walk quite easily amongst the colonies of noisy birds without causing too much consternation, provided you don’t get too close. At times this is almost impossible, as birds will literally nest on the paths.

  Having grown up on Norfolk and being absolutely passionate about the place, particularly its wildlife, my guide was superb. She knew the best route to take to get the best views of all the nesting species, including the raucous Sooty Terns, the clumsy looking Masked Boobies and what I consider to be possibly the cutest seabird of all, the Grey Ternlet. A relative of the larger White Tern, which tends to get all the press when it comes to the wow factor, the Grey Ternlet has a much subtler beauty. It too has the big black eyes and dark beak contrasting with a whitish head, giving it an innocent, baby-faced look, but rather than being dazzling white, its body is a soft powder grey. It is simply gorgeous when seen up close. We even detoured to the research hut to see the gecko endemic to Phillip Island hiding in the shade. She showed me everything, though whenever I asked about the White-necked Petrel she seemed cagey and evasive.

  I still thought the White-necked was on the agenda and I asked again. She shifted uncomfortably and admitted that we’d passed their burrow and now didn’t have enough time to go back for it. Exasperated, I began to plead with her. She explained that she was under orders not to show the Petrels to any more birders, mumbling something about the welfare of the birds. I was baffled. All the other seabirds on the island hardly glanced at us twice as we moved past their nests. All I wanted was a quick squiz – a few seconds would suffice.

  I was convinced there was something else going on, and then I remembered my conversation the day before with the researcher and island resident who had discovered the White-necked Petrel. We had been getting on like a house on fire. He was interested to hear what I’d been seeing. He told me I’d just missed out on Long-tailed Cuckoo (a rare New Zealand visitor) by a fortnight. He filled me in on the politics of the White-chested White-eye sightings. And then I mentioned the White-necked Petrel. The laughter at the other end of the line immediately ceased and I was treated to a twenty-minute tirade on how a mainland twitcher had stolen all the glory over the discovery of the bird.

  In fact I already knew the other side of the story. The two of them were on Phillip Island when the researcher told the twitcher of this strange petrel he had found in a nesting burrow. When shown the bird in question the twitcher immediately identified it as a White-necked Petrel. Back in Australia he wrote an article about Australia’s first breeding record of White-necked Petrel. Because he had been the one to identify it, he didn’t acknowledge the researcher which, though a bit rude, followed scientific protocol. If the researcher had correctly identified the bird, he would have been entitled to full recognition. Still, the snub rankled greatly and the next time the twitcher came to the island he was given a frosty reception indeed.

  A reception that now seemed to be extended to me. I could see the boat setting out from Norfolk to pick us up. If I couldn’t convince my guide to backtrack to the burrow I was screwed. She stood resolute. She said she would have loved to help me but when, a month earlier, she had shown another twitcher the bird and he reported it on the Internet, she incurred the wrath of the researcher. If word got out that she had shown me the bird, she feared strings would be pulled and she’d lose her guiding permit on the grounds that she’d placed the wildlife at risk of harm. By this time the boat was pulling in to pick us up and it was too late.

  We boarded the boat in a rising swell and the ride back was extremely bumpy. I was spewing – not literally from the pounding of the waves, but because I’d dipped out all because of island politics. In such a small population you have to be very careful that you don’t get on the wrong side of certain people. It is much less stressful to put up with the occasional angst-ridden rantings of a thwarted twitcher than to incur the wrath of those you have to deal with every day. I felt for my guide as she seemed genuinely upset that she couldn’t show me the bird. Perhaps my evident agony at dipping out did have some effect, though, because on the next Wollongong boat trip a month later, I spoke to Jo Wieneke from Townsville and discovered that she had just come back from a trip to Norfolk where she had been shown the White-necked Petrel in the burrow by the same guide that I’d had. Maybe my desperate pleading had softened her resolve. Maybe it was just the fact that Jo is an exceptionally nice person and I come across as an annoying arsehole. Whatever the reason, it meant that I dipped on White-necked Petrel. I would not see one anywhere else for the entire year.

  It looked like I was also about to dip on another Norfolk specialty, the Norfolk Island Red-crowned Parakeet. This endemic bird, recently split out as a separate species from its New Zealand relative, was so common at the time of settlement that its raids on the first crops almost sent the fledgling colony into famine. From then on it was heavily hunted. This, combined with competition for dwindling nesting hollows from the introduction to the island of the bigger and bolder Crimson Rosella, ensured the bird’s inevitable decline. By the early 1980s there were only about thirty left. A rescue effort was undertaken, centred on a captive-breeding program at the Botanic Gardens, and now there are around two hundred birds roaming the island.

  Not that I could bloody well find them. I’d been assured that the easiest method of getting onto the parakeets was to hang out at the Botanic Gardens next to the cage containing the captive birds. Apparently wild birds would come in and have a bit of a chat with their captive mates. Everyone I spoke to gave me different advice. ‘You want to be there first thing in the morning.’ ‘Nah, they’re more likely mid morning.’ ‘Rubbish! Late afternoon is when you want to go.’ After three days of being there morning, noon and night I’d had no luck whatsoever – it wasn’t until the end of the third day that I’d even managed to find one of the caged birds.

  By the final morning I was pretty desperate. My plane was leaving at ten fifteen so I didn’t have much time. One of the captive birds was calling at dawn but it didn’t bring any wild birds in. I raced around to the other side of the island where I heard a bird calling from the depths of the forest, but it didn’t show itself. Back to the Bot Gardens and still nothing. It was now after nine.

  The airport is minutes away from the gardens so I nicked down there, checked in my luggage, went into town to refill the hire car – the bloke at the servo couldn’t believe I’d done three hundred kilometres in three days on an island measuring only eight by five kilometres, reckoning it must be some kind of record. Speeding back to the parrot aviary I arrived at nine fifty-five for one last forlorn attempt.

  At two minutes to ten I could see one of the aviary birds sitting mockingly on the edge of
the cage. I scanned the surrounding bush. Nothing but a covey of introduced California Quail scampering for cover. I trained my binoculars back on the parrot in the cage and suddenly realised it was not actually in the cage, but sitting on the outside. It was a wild bird! At five past ten exactly I had Red-crowned Parakeet on my list.

  Ten minutes later I was on the plane as it took off for the mainland.

  CHAPTER 10

  10 February, Hospital Swamp, Victoria:

  262 species

  I arrived back on the mainland on 3 February. My next trip wasn’t for another eight days, when I was to head to Brisbane. The intervening period gave me a foretaste of just what was involved in a year of twitching – a life on the road, last minute changes to schedules to accommodate rare birds turning up unexpectedly, and mad dashes across the country in order not to miss them.

  First up was a quick detour down to Tasmania to join a boat trip of visiting Taiwanese birders that Groober had organised. Groober and I were having a sensational time as the little charter boat, The Pauletta, bobbed about in the steepling waves. There were albatrosses all around us. Dozens of White-chinned Petrels fought amongst themselves over the scraps we threw them. There were so many birds coming to the boat that I was supremely confident something brilliant was about to make an appearance. Pity the Taiwanese weren’t seeing any of it. Despite assuring Groober that they’d taken their seasickness medication, seven of the nine were down for the count. They lay on the deck ashen faced, politely puking into plastic bags.

  After two hours of this torture they finally mutinied. Rising from her prone, shivering misery, the one with the greatest command of English cried, ‘No more. We go back now!’ The others shakily but emphatically nodded in agreement.

  The skipper turned to us and apologised, explaining that as it was their charter, he was obliged to head back to port. When The Pauletta went out the following weekend, there were five Gould’s Petrels in the same vicinity. I’m sure if we had stayed out just half an hour longer, something as exceptional as this would have turned up. It was not be, though, and by nightfall I was touching down at Sydney Airport again.

  A quick check of the Internet at the airport dictated my route for the drive back to Melbourne. A Ringed Plover had turned up at the mouth of the Snowy River in Victoria. This is possibly only the twelfth-ever sighting in Australia, and it is certainly a species I had not contemplated seeing in my original potential tally of 705. So I took the coastal route back to Melbourne picking up on the way not only the Ringed Plover but a swag of fantastic southeastern specialties such as Wonga Pigeon, Hooded Plover, Blue-winged Parrot, Red-browed Treecreeper, Glossy Black-Cockatoo, Southern Emu-wren and Pilotbird.

  I saw the Blue-winged Parrots just before dark out on a bush block that I had looked at buying a little more than a year earlier. I was still in a relationship and we had walked the property and tried to imagine a future there together. I guess my imagination faltered and I looked over that block of forest in the fading light tinged with regret. If things had gone differently we might have been building a house there right then. Instead I was faced with a year and an entire continent unfurling before me, knowing that I would be alone most of the way. Well, not entirely alone. At times I’d be accompanied by other birdwatchers, like Groober. Gee, that really makes up for everything. As much as I like Groober, I know who I’d prefer to snuggle up with at night.

  The day before I headed off to Brisbane I was out doing the February Seaford Swamp survey with Groober. The good wader areas had dried up and there wasn’t much about, meaning we got through the survey earlier than anticipated. There were still a couple of hours of light left and Groober suggested we could try for the Red-necked Phalarope that had turned up down near Geelong. Of the 705 birds on my wish list, the Red-necked Phalarope is one I was least confident of seeing. Not sighted in Australia until 1962, since then one or two seem to turn up somewhere every year, but not always. They are almost annual on Rottnest Island near Perth and are virtually guaranteed at the Port Headland Saltworks but word was, it had become almost impossible to gain access there. I wouldn’t be heading that way until much later in the year so it made sense to get it out of the way. We worked out sunset was a little over two hours away, almost the same time it would have taken to drive via Melbourne to get to Geelong, which lies on the almost exact opposite side of Port Phillip Bay to Seaford. We figured it might be quicker to head south and catch the ferry across the bay. We took the risk, not knowing what time the last ferry sailed.

  We pulled in to Sorrento at five minutes to seven. The last ferry for the day left at seven and we were the final car aboard. Alighting at Queenscliff we raced up towards Hospital Swamp, which lies just south of Geelong, arriving with the sun dangling threateningly on the edge of the horizon. After getting permission from the bemused landholder we charged across to the swamp and desperately scanned the wader flocks. Nothing. It was getting too dark and I couldn’t see how we’d have missed the phalarope if it had been there. I’d begun to pack up my scope, thinking at least it was a worthy effort, when Groober’s sudden cry called me back. It had been hidden behind a tussock and had just swum out onto the open water.

  Five minutes later it was too dark too see. We were the last observers ever to see the bird. It was gone by the time I got back from Brisbane. I didn’t hear of another one anywhere in the country for the rest of the year.

  CHAPTER 11

  17 February, Slim Dusty billboard, Pacific Highway,

  New South Wales:

  319 species

  Brisbane is the capital of Queensland and Australia’s third largest city. That’s about as much as most other Australians know of Brisbane. When they visit southeast Queensland they usually head to the holiday resorts of the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, immediately to the south and north, ignoring the city itself. Over the last decade much has been done to shake off Brisbane’s image as a sleepy country town with a bit of a seedy underbelly. In general it’s failed. Not at building a vibrant cultural and business hub, but in convincing the rest of the country that Brisbane is a place that matters.

  It most definitely matters for birders, though, for within Brisbane’s hinterland is a richness of bird species surpassed only by the Wet Tropics of the Far North. The Brisbane area is essential for any birding tour of Australia. I was there for a week and hoped to add plenty to my list. After checking in to my bland inner city hotel room that looked like every other bland inner city hotel room in the rest of the world, I immediately felt compelled to get the hell out of there. I acclimatised myself by taking a stroll down to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens.

  Brisbane’s CBD is designed as if it is trying to deny the existence of the Brisbane River, which cuts a turbulent, mighty brown swathe around the city. About the only place you can get a river view is down by the Bot Gardens and this interface of river and park can make for some surprisingly good birdwatching. Even though I saw fewer species than on a similar stroll through Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens, the birds seemed so much more exotic, with species such as Figbird, Australian Brush-Turkey, Spangled Drongo and the hornbill-like Channel-billed Cuckoo. It had been Brisbane’s hottest summer in years and by the time I got back to my hotel room I was soaking in sweat, a reminder that for much of the year I would be operating in areas with similar, if not higher, temperatures and humidity, but with no minibar full of drinks at the end of the day.

  I was up at dawn the next morning which, thanks to Queensland’s insistence on not adopting daylight savings time, meant I was on the road by 5 am. I was actually heading into New South Wales to try once again for the South Island Pied Oystercatcher. The SIPO, as it is known, looks very similar to the Pied Oystercatcher of Australia; in fact until recently they were considered the same species. In the late nineties somebody found that a couple of SIPOs had turned up on a beach near Ballina, about 200 kilometres south of Brisbane. It took me about two years to finally get up there to twitch them – more a slow stretch than a twitch – by whi
ch time the gen on where to find them had gone slightly cold as the twitching community had moved on to chasing other rarities. And to make matters worse I broke the crucial unspoken rule of twitching: I took my girlfriend along in a foolish attempt to combine a romantic getaway with a twitching trip. Promising her a stroll along a lovely ocean beach, I should have known I was in trouble when I first saw the smoke from the bushfire.

  As the fire burned slowly through a paddock I made some disparaging comment to the effect of, ‘These bloody cane farmers – they just can’t help themselves.’ Turned out it was not sugar cane farmers burning off but a serial firebug who had set things ablaze. Unaware and unconcerned we parked the car and headed off to the beach. I thought it would be a short stroll but three hours later, with nothing but the Aussie Pied Oystercatchers putting in an appearance and the plume of smoke coming from the direction of the car just getting bigger and bigger, I was beginning to worry just a little. My girlfriend was more than worried; she was bordering on distraught. Giving her the remaining water and assuring her I’d only be about twenty minutes, I set off further along the beach, leaving her to the mercy of the elements and the four-wheel drives rampaging up and down the sand. Two hours later I returned without having seen the birds. We had to trudge all the way back down the beach and then run through the flames of the bushfire to get back to the car. Suffice to say, we are no longer together.