The Big Twitch

by Sean Dooley

  I can’t say that my twitching habit has ever actually broken up a relationship, but I think at times it hasn’t helped. I’ve almost managed to convert a couple of girlfriends to birdwatching but even then, the amount of time they consider should be spent looking for birds versus nurturing the relationship is always vastly different to my estimation. No matter how open and understanding they are, they always end up feeling they come off second best, and I always feel like I have to hold in check my full effort in chasing after rarities. And it doesn’t help matters when the romantic field trips you promise turn out to be long hard slogs through mosquito infested swamps. Try wooing a girl with a trip to a sewage farm.

  And then there was the girlfriend who agreed to come with me on a trip to northern Victoria for a day’s birding. She fell asleep in the car and woke to find herself alone in the middle of God-knows-where, with rising floodwaters lapping at the wheels of the car. I was nowhere to be seen but my shoes and – most disturbingly – pants were sitting on the roof of the car. In my mind the explanation was quite logical. The swamp was in flood and I couldn’t risk getting the car bogged by going any further. The whole area looked great for Painted Snipe and Little Bitterns and as I didn’t have any gumboots with me I had taken off my shoes and pants to stop them getting wet, not waking her because she looked so peaceful asleep. Simple. She didn’t quite see it that way and no amount of explanation ever allayed her suspicions. As there are so few female twitchers and, as far as I know, absolutely none around my age, my choices are either to find a sympathetic and indulgent partner who can put up with my idiosyncratic hobby, or remain single.

  Having remained single, I had no such encumbrances this time around and happily headed off along the beach at Ballina, extremely optimistic of finally adding SIPO to my list. It was the sort of day that, if I’d had a wife and had brought her along, divorce proceedings would have been initiated. Caught in the tail end of a tropical depression (just below a cyclone in terms of damage) I trudged for hours along the beach, soaked to the skin. I hadn’t brought anything vaguely waterproof. The rain bucketed down and the wind howled, sending stinging salt spray in off the ocean horizontally, so that the microphone on my video camera totally packed it in, necessitating a thousand dollar replacement – the warranty covered everything except being stupid enough to expose the camera to salt. The squalls were so intense that whenever I did come across oystercatchers I lost them behind a grey curtain of rain if they moved more than ten metres from me. Eventually, after hours of hard slog, I came across a bird in a group of Aussie Pieds that seemed to have more white in the wing, and much shorter legs – when it ran it looked like a dinky little wind-up toy version of a real oystercatcher. Next day I showed the video of the bird to Andrew Stafford, a long-time buddy and Brisbane birder, and he confirmed it for me: South Island Pied Oystercatcher, on my list!

  I first met Andrew on a Bird Observers’ Club Young Members outing in the early eighties when I was about fourteen and Andrew around twelve. His mum was so terrified of letting her snowy-haired little boy out with these scruffy older kids that she had loaded him up with numerous packets of lollies. Whether the lollies were meant to be used as bribes or to provide the energy he’d need to outrun us when we started beating him up, I’m not sure, but it earned him the tag ‘Sugarman’ for years to come.

  His family moved to BrisVegas a few years later and he embraced his adopted city with alacrity, particularly its music scene. He had just started work on a definitive history of the Brisbane music scene, to be titled ‘Pig City’. Andrew is one of the few people I know with whom I can discuss both the habitat preference of the Eastern Grass Owl and which Beatle plays which guitar solo on the final track of Abbey Road. Interestingly, he approaches both topics with the same methodical intensity and can rattle off which are the best months for seeing White-necked Petrel off Brisbane just as readily as he can give you a twenty-minute dissertation on his top three rock albums that contain seven tracks or less.

  Given his propensity for the methodical approach, for the first time in the year, I left myself in the hands of the local expert – even though I’d done a bit of birding around Brisbane before I felt totally comfortable letting Andrew dictate the day’s agenda. My initial confidence was dented slightly when, after picking him up for yet another 5 am start, he assured me our first stop would be at a ‘dead cert’ site for Comb-crested Jacana. Naturally we failed to find any whatsoever. My faith was restored dramatically when, after nursing my pathetic little hire car up to the top of the rainforest clad hills at Lacey’s Creek, Andrew assured me that this was the best site around Brisbane for White-eared Monarch, a bird I had never seen. He finished this sentence with the caveat, ‘Of course White-eared Monarchs can be very tricky.’

  He immediately got out of the car and exclaimed, ‘Good Lord, there’s one now!’

  That White-eared Monarch was a lifer for me. If only other birds were that easy to come by.

  Later in the day we found ourselves in the vicinity of Lake Samsonvale. We weren’t after waterbirds, but quail. Finding quail is hard work, requiring a hell of a lot of paddock bashing on foot through thick tropical grass. In these situations I am always apprehensive about snakes but Andrew laughed.

  ‘You should be more worried about the paper wasps. When they attack it’s like a million little hypodermics piercing your skin.’

  He pointed out one of their paper bag like nests attached to a tall blade of grass and suggested I avoid banging into one. Then I noticed that there was a wasps’ nest every metre or so, which put me on edge for the rest of the sweat-inducing hour we trudged through the grassland in the midday heat with no luck whatsoever.

  We moved on to an area that Andrew assured me was reliable for King Quail, another species I had never seen before. With no success on the overgrown tracks we were forced to backtrack. Andrew was explaining to me that with King Quail it is a pretty hit and miss affair and I shouldn’t be too disappointed, when suddenly a female King Quail literally flew up from under our feet. We tried to flush it again, to no avail. I expressed a little disappointment at the brevity of the view – we saw it for maybe three seconds at most. Andrew countered that he’d just had one of his most prolonged views ever of this elusive species; most of the time all you get is a blur of wings that flash past you in a millisecond.

  En route back to Brisbane we stopped in at a few more sites. We had planned to do some spotlighting but after a solid day of birding, much of it flogging through impenetrable grasses under the blazing sun, we decided to call it quits. Though we’d dipped out on a couple of things, we’d seen ninety-six species for the day, twenty of which were new for the year.

  The next day I did it all again. Heading south, I was trying to follow up reports of Painted Snipe on the Gold Coast. I’d looked for the alleged site two days earlier en route to the SIPO but all I’d found was a small wetland that seemed little better than a muddy ditch. It turned out this actually was the wetland where the Painted Snipe were. This is a nationally threatened species that is one of the most enigmatic of all Australian birds. They follow the ephemeral waters of inland floods but no-one can predict with any certainty where they will turn up, so as I arrived at the wetland I was not really that hopeful. To compound my doubts, bulldozers were operating nonstop a few hundred metres away as they gouged out the foundations for the next new ‘Gold Coast lifestyle experience’. Bustling women in hot pink outfits power-walked by and older couples walked dogs on the adjacent fields. A council vehicle was slashing grass on the roadside verge. I just couldn’t believe it was possible for a Painted Snipe to exist here at all. And then a lone male bird wandered into view. Bugger me. I take back all those flooded ditch comments. This place should be on the National Estate!

  I made my way back along the coast, checking out the mangrove and mudflat habitats of Moreton Bay, not getting back to my stark hotel room till well after dark. I decided to dine at the hotel and realised, with all the cooing couples around me, th
at it was Valentine’s Day, so I went back to my room to bring my loved one down to dine with me. I spent the meal staring lovingly across the table at my binoculars. We made a toast to having passed three hundred birds (Richard’s Pipit at Hastings Point) but decorum prevents me from revealing whether the relationship was consummated that night. Let’s just say that with my binoculars, I like to watch.

  My alarm went off at four-thirty and yet again I was heading out before dawn. The birding had been great but the fatigue was really starting to kick in for the first time in the year.

  The day turned out to be brilliant. I picked Andrew up and we headed out to the Conondale Ranges. The Conondales are one of the most underrated spots in the country, a superb area of rainforest, rivers and mountains only a couple of hours north of Brisbane. And they harbour some spectacular birdlife. We failed to find our target species, the Black-breasted Button-quail, despite finding some fresh platelets. When the button-quail feed they scratch at the forest floor in a circular motion that leaves telltale circular dishes of earth in the leaf litter, meaning that we knew they were in the area, but just not showing themselves.

  This disappointment aside, the rest of the day was a nonstop natural wonder feast. Good birds like Cicadabird, Paradise Riflebird (a relative of New Guinea’s birds of paradise) and Russet-tailed Thrush all showed well and we came eyeball to eyeball with a massive Diamond Python curled up in the hollow of a tree. A less fun encounter happened when my ankle brushed past a seedling of the Gympie Stinging Tree. Luckily it was just a juvenile plant and the sting was not as severe as it should have been, but my ankle itched madly for about three days. To cop a branch across the face would be sheer agony and I can’t begin to imagine the pain felt by the tourist – as the legend goes – caught short in the rainforest who saw the nice big shiny green leaves and figured they would make a good substitute for toilet paper.

  Andrew even managed to redeem on the jacana front as in nearby farmland he spied a pair on a dam. We arrived back in Brisbane satisfied but exhausted. The next day we were up just as early to get down to Southport on the Gold Coast for the pelagic trip. The boat we set out in was enormous, particularly when compared with the little tubs we use on the south coast. It had two levels and more than adequately catered for the thirty or so passengers setting sail. I couldn’t believe either the luxury or the comfort, though the ample size of the boat was to have unforeseen consequences.

  Proceedings started very well indeed, for just beyond the breakwater was a massive feeding flock, mainly Wedge-tailed Shearwaters but something more exciting could have been lurking amongst them. Pretty soon my prayers seemed to be answered when the cry of ‘Streaked Shearwater!’ went up.

  I definitely needed this, another bird I had never seen before. I was atop the upper section of the boat and could see the bird in question flying around amidst the general throng but every time I raised my binoculars the boat pitched violently and I got at best a shaky glimpse, certainly not enough to tick the bird off. If I’d been on the lower, more stable deck I would probably have been able to satisfactorily clinch the ID for myself. But I wasn’t too worried as we were barely an hour into the trip and the birding had already been sensational. Streaked Shearwater was all but in the bag, not to mention what else was waiting out there at the shelf.

  Oh how wrong I was. For the rest of the day we added just six other species, all in very low numbers, with a pair of Hutton’s Shearwater the only new bird for the list. Early enthusiasm waned and as the swell died down and the sun heated up, we were soon adrift in our own version of the doldrums. While most moved down to the lower deck for some shade, I remained desperately vigilant with one or two other diehards, trying to squeeze out another Streaked Shearwater. The languid afternoon dragged on, sapping everybody’s energy. Eventually it was time to head for shore…

  About halfway back everyone had retreated to the lower deck save for a birder called Bill Moorhead and myself. Bill had driven all the way down from Bundaberg for this trip and was almost as disap- pointed as me in the day’s outcome. Suddenly I saw two birds sitting on the water. They were a long way off and all we could pick up was that they were largish with pale heads – like nothing I’d ever seen before. I mentally rushed through the pages of the field guide in my head, trying to think what those birds could possibly have been. I was stumped. I yelled down through the hatch to alert the others that we had got something interesting. One or two people raised their heads disinterestedly and gestured that they couldn’t hear me. I looked back out to sea and noted that the birds were still on the water but the boat was now starting to head away from them.

  I raced up to the stern where the more expert seabirders had gathered. I approached Paul Wallbridge, the organiser of the trip and champion of Queensland pelagics, and started describing the birds to him. As I mentioned the pale heads he looked at me quizzically and it suddenly clicked. There was only one possibility of something that large with a pale head – Streaked Shearwater. We scanned the area where I’d seen the birds but we were too low to the water to get a good view. I was off, charging back to the upper deck. By the time I got there Bill was just putting down his binoculars.

  ‘They’ve just flown off,’ he said. ‘You know what they are, they’re – ’ ‘Streaked Shearwaters.’

  ‘Yeah. So you saw them then.’ Bill seemed relieved for me.

  ‘Nup.’

  I tried to console myself that I’d pick up Streaked Shearwater in October on the Ashmore Reef trip, but nonetheless I disembarked at the end of the day extremely dejected. Two opportunities to tick this species had gone begging. There is no doubt about what I saw but because I wasn’t satisfied within myself that I had got on to enough salient features, I couldn’t in good conscience put the bird down on my list.

  The drive back to Brissy was a rather subdued one. Andrew suggested we forget about birdwatching for a while and head out to catch a band, let him prove to me that the phrase ‘Brisbane culture’ is not an oxymoron. We headed to his mum’s place for a shower and change of clothes. His mum greeted us with the news that he had to call Tony Palliser in Sydney immediately as a – ‘Hang on, I wrote the name down somewhere…Ah, there it is’ – a Kentish Plover had been seen.

  Andrew’s mum is a very cool, open-minded woman who is obviously very proud of her son, but as Andrew raced to the phone and started going ballistic as he listened to Tony, I could see the same look of incomprehension on her face that my parents often wore: ‘This person cannot possibly be related to me.’

  While excited about the news of a Kentish Plover turning up on the New South Wales Central Coast, only the second Australian record ever, Andrew sensibly wasn’t about to drop work and other responsibilities to go for it. I, on the other hand, who had only one more full day left in Brisbane, faced an agonising dilemma. I had organised with Paul Wallbridge to head out the next day to try for what I was assured were almost dead cert Bush-hen and Little Bittern, two elusive species that would be very handy to have nailed down. But a Kentish Plover. To miss out on that would be criminal. It’s a 700-kilometre run from Brisbane to Old Bar where the Kentish had been found. It was Saturday evening. I was due to fly out Monday morning and as I was heading up to Wollongong from Melbourne the following weekend for another boat trip, I could easily go up a day or two earlier and go for the Kentish at a more leisurely pace. But by then it might have gone. Two guaranteed ticks if I stayed in Brisbane versus a highly risky 1400-kilometre dash for one. The choice was obvious.

  I left Brisbane at five thirty the next morning, racing towards the target in constant contact with other twitchers who were also going for the bird. By the time I reached Murwillumbah a call from Mike Carter, who was heading up from Melbourne, confirmed that the bird had definitely been identified as a Kentish Plover. At Grafton Tony Palliser called from out at the site saying he couldn’t find the bird. By the time I drove past the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour a devastated Tony had called again: he had to get back to Sydney to catch an
international flight for work. On the outskirts of Port Macquarie a call from Andrew let me know the others had got both the bittern and the Bush-hen.

  It took me nine hours of solid driving to reach my destination, stopping only for petrol and an enormous billboard of Slim Dusty that loomed incongruously on the highway just outside of Kempsey. After seven hours of driving my mind might have drifted off the main game for I felt compelled to pull the car over and take a photo. It also gave me the opportunity to have a sneaky leak beside the car; a much more preferable option than going in an empty bottle. It was, however, rather disconcerting to have a gigantic country and western icon peering down upon me as I went about my business.

  I pulled into the carpark above the beach at Old Bar to see Mike Carter’s long-suffering wife Trisha sitting in their car reading a magazine. Trisha is not a birder but has spent a lifetime accompanying Mike on his twitching expeditions, enduring along the way: being stranded in the desert for two weeks, almost being kidnapped by Rascals in Papua New Guinea and having their tent washed out to sea in North Queensland. This time she had only had to endure a mad last minute dash the thousand or so kilometres from Melbourne. She told me that they had arrived fifteen minutes earlier and Mike had just headed down to the beach. I assembled my gear and followed him to be met by a group of birders from Newcastle who had just spent the day searching for the bird. One of them offered to walk me to the beach to point out where they had seen it.

  He was full of urgency as he said they discovered the Kentish Plover on a high tide roost and as the tide was rapidly turning he assumed the bird would soon move off to feed on the extensive mudflats where it would be almost impossible to find. Having given me the hurry-up, he then proceeded to go into lengthy detail about the bird: how they had found it; what other species it was associating with; plumage and behaviour details – everything I would ever want to know about this particular Kentish Plover – when all I really wanted was to get out there and see it. I stood on the sand waiting for him to finish his dissertation, hopping impatiently from one foot to the other. I could see Mike in the distance approaching the site where the bird was. He kept talking, Mike kept getting closer and the tide kept receding. I snapped and, without apology, left him mid sentence to charge up the beach towards Mike. Never get between a twitcher and a new bird. All social niceties go out the window.