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The Big Twitch

Page 13

by Sean Dooley


  When I arrived breathless about ten minutes later, Mike was in a state of extreme agitation. The bird was nowhere to be found. Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have stopped for Slim Dusty. We scanned the surrounding beach, focusing our attention on a shingle bank. Nothing. Training our scopes on the bank revealed that there were birds there, resting amongst the pebbles, blending in remarkably well. Birds seemed to materialise in front of our eyes. First a Red-capped Plover, then another, then another three. Next a Double-banded Plover, and a Lesser Sand Plover – a new species for the year – but no Kentish.

  Suddenly Mike cried, ‘There’s something with a collar!’ referring not to some overly formal beach goer, but the white collar of a Kentish Plover that distinguishes it from the Red-capped. And sure enough, Australia’s second Kentish Plover emerged magically from amongst the shingle. Not long after, a couple walking their dog put the little flock to flight and we couldn’t relocate the Kentish. If I had been five minutes later I would have missed the bird entirely. Thank God I resisted the urge to stop at the Big Banana.

  I made the flight back home from Brisbane the next morning with minutes to spare. As it happens, the Kentish hung around for another month, so I could have gone for it at my leisure. Trying to find another Bush-hen and Little Bittern would turn out to be quite another saga.

  CHAPTER 12

  15 March, Christmas Island Detention Centre:

  353 species

  If Christmas Island were to be invaded tomorrow I suspect that the only Australians who would bother trying to defend it would be the twitching community, who within minutes would be organising a strike force of angry nerds to protect their sacred soil. Lying less than four hundred kilometres from Indonesia and more than a thousand from mainland Australia, Christmas Island belongs to Australia only because of the quirks of international politics. Originally annexed as part of Britain’s Strait’s Settlements which also included such places as Singapore and Penang, the island was taken over by the Japanese in World War II. Once they got it back the British began looking to offload it and in 1958 the island was officially ceded to Australia. Because of its proximity to Asia, the addition of Christmas Island has seen the Australian bird list jump by more than twenty species and with more birders visiting every year it is not outrageous to imagine another twenty turning up in the next few decades. All it takes is a decent tropical storm to whip up and a bird that would normally be found on Java or Sumatra can suddenly find itself blown onto the Australian list – a case of ‘I don’t think we’re in Yogyakarta anymore, Toto.’

  The week before I left for Christmas Island just such an event occurred, with a bunch of Asian birds suddenly turning up on the island. Amongst them was a first for Australia, a Cinnamon Bittern. Sadly it had died, presumably of exhaustion soon after making landfall, and now resided in the freezer at the national parks office. I was due to land on Christmas Island on the Sunday. Glenn Holmes, one of the first generation of Aussie twitchers, now doing botanical fieldwork on the island with his wife, Jenny, had come across a Malayan Night Heron on the Friday and while looking for it the next morning, another birder-cum-researcher, David James, had also found a Watercock. Both these birds are incredible rarities on Australian soil and both would be new not just for me but also for Mike Carter, who has the greatest list of any Australian twitcher.

  Mike was accompanying me on this trip. A civil engineer by profession, Mike was involved in the nascent twitching scene in England in the early sixties when he had the good fortune to marry a young Aussie girl named Trisha and moved here in 1964. His interest in twitching piqued by former record holder John McKean, by the early nineties Mike had seen just about every bird there was to see on the Australian mainland. Naturally his thoughts turned offshore. He virtually pioneered the twitching trip to Christmas Island but had never been there in the first half of a calender year. When I asked him if he was interested in joining me on this March trip, he immediately jumped at the chance.

  With the tantalising prospect of two new birds in the offing Mike was almost in a state of apoplexy as we flew out over the Indian Ocean from Perth. The plane stopped en route at the Cocos Islands. A string of low-lying atolls almost closer to Sri Lanka than they are to Australia, the Cocos are Australian territory nonetheless. The islands contain no endemic species but they do have one species that occurs nowhere else in Australia: the Green Jungle Fowl. Introduced by plantation workers in the 1880s this is the Indonesian relative of the domestic chicken that originated in mainland South East Asia. The birds went feral on Cocos Island and can still be seen along the airstrip. We had our telescopes on board in case they were not easy to see from the terminal. On landing the dark forms of the jungle fowl could be seen scattering across the airfield, but we were moving too fast for me to get a tickable view. They herded us off the aircraft and we were told we had twenty minutes before reboarding. The terminal was filled with the local Malay population greeting relatives, farewelling others and the mood was quite festive. I was a little downcast as none of the green chooks had come back out onto the airstrip so we decided to wander across the runway to look for them in the scrub on the other side. We managed to get a good look at the birds, including a quite handsome male, and even had time to check out the idyllic tropical lagoon that lies next to the airfield.

  Upon returning we were confronted by a horrified federal police officer. In the post–September 11 era, people are not supposed to be able to simply wander across the tarmac at international airports. We explained that we were just birdwatching but that seemed to exasperate him even more. He snapped that we were jeopardising our personal safety. I looked out along the runway to the waves crashing against the shore. There was probably not another plane within a thousand kilometres of us, ours being only one of two commercial flights a week. Smiling, I told him I didn’t think any plane was likely to have sneaked up on us. This didn’t help matters and he ushered us towards a small room in the terminal building. Suddenly I had visions of the week I was supposed to be ticking new birds on Christmas Island being spent in the Cocos lockup being interrogated about potential espionage activities.

  Suddenly there was some sort of ruckus amongst the Malays and one of them raced over to our custodian demanding he urgently see to some crisis or other. Temporarily ignored, Mike and I joined the other passengers getting back on the plane and slunk back to our seats, keeping very quiet until it finally took off.

  Rising dramatically out of the ocean like the island from Jurassic Park, Christmas Island’s towering cliffs, an impediment to human settlement for centuries, provide a unique tropical environment that has developed with very little interference from the outside world. The island is a haven for birds and even in the main settlement, a town of around fifteen hundred people, ethereally beautiful seabirds, such as tropicbirds, wheel in the skies above. The golden hued White-tailed Tropicbird can even be found nesting right on the footpath. Pterodactyl-like frigatebirds, including the endemic Christmas Frigatebird, also patrol the skies. Swooping in to drink from any source of fresh water – including the swimming pool at the casino resort – only reinforcing the Jurassic Park feel.

  But if Christmas Island was any movie it would be Groundhog Day for over the next seven days every day was identical in almost every respect. Same weather, same birds, same routine. The weather never changed – it was always stinking hot with a tropical downpour late in the morning alleviating the heat for about an hour before the humidity began to build up again to unbearable levels. The birds were almost always the same – we saw around twenty-two species every day. After the first full day we only added another eight more species during the entire trip. But we constantly kept trying for new species, especially the Malayan Night Heron, which eluded us seven mornings in a row despite us thoroughly searching the rainforest tracks every morning at dawn near where Glenn and David had seen it.

  About the only place we spent more time than those tracks was the Christmas Island tip. As there is no sewage farm on the is
land I guess this is where all the rare birds feel compelled to go. If you look at the vagrant records from the island, you will notice that nearly all of them are of open country species. There may in fact be many rare forest dwellers that turn up on Christmas Island but they would tend to lurk in the actual rainforest itself which, though kept fairly open by the grazing of the island’s famous red crabs (until the infestations of crazy ants started to take their toll), is made virtually impenetrable by the shards of limestone littered throughout. These shards are so sharp that they will slice the sturdiest of boots to shreds in a matter of days. So if you want to have a chance of finding rarities, you need to look in the more open, disturbed areas.

  And places don’t get much more disturbed than the tip. Every day there was a new pile of rubbish to attract new multitudes of flies. One day we arrived to find somebody had dumped the carcasses of around sixty chickens. As they festered in the equatorial sun the stench became unbearable and I found myself dry retching whenever we visited. The resulting bonanza of flies proved irresistible to insect feeding birds such as Barn Swallows, Christmas Island Glossy Swiftlets and at least two different White Wagtails, a very rare bird indeed for Australia. The flies were so abundant that while I was videoing one of the White Wagtails it yawned and a fly managed to buzz straight down its open throat. Now that’s service.

  To me, the place was paradise, with the rubbish tip at its epicentre. Which is, I suppose, why our benevolent and kind-hearted government decided to build the refugee detention centre immediately adjacent to the tip. Top blokes, our politicians – there’s nothing they won’t do to help make asylum seekers’ lives just that little more unbearable. On the other side of the detention centre – a real prison with razor wire, real guards with real guns and accommodation that looks like it has been constructed out of shipping containers – is the island’s sportsground, which is also a very good place for birds. We visited both the sportsground and the tip so frequently that the guards stopped bothering to check us out, leaving Mike and me alone. Far more unsettling than being searched by uniformed armed guards was the incongruity of how life pans out for different people. There was I, indulging in the ultimate freedom. I had the money and the means to visit this place in the pursuit of my own personal goals, for my own amusement. The people who stared forlornly (or is that resentfully?) at me through the wire had ended up there against their will, because they risked everything to try to reach a land where they could have the same opportunities I’ve had.

  The reality of this contrast really hit home on the fifth morning when we discovered one of the birds of the trip. Having done the usual rounds of the forest tracks unsuccessfully looking for the Night Heron we decided we’d have a quick look around the overgrown go-cart track that lies between the sportsground and the detention centre. We had seen White-breasted Waterhens there and suspected they night have been breeding. As we searched the rank grasses, a plump, medium sized bird parachuted down in front of us. It was so short winged and short tailed that at first I thought it was a pigeon. I asked out loud, ‘What was that?’ and before Mike had a chance to answer I cried, ‘It was a snipe! It was a snipe!’

  I think Mike realised it was a snipe all along, but I was so surprised that I kept repeating the phrase like an idiot. We cautiously approached its landing place but as we did three more snipe flew past emitting a dull rasping call that seemed to spur the bird on the ground into action, and it rose up to join them. Snipe are notoriously difficult to identify in the field but on the basis of call, size, the small bill, short, rounded wings and short tail we were both happy to call this bird a Pin-tailed Snipe – that and the fact that Mike had also managed to see the definitive pin-like feathers on the tail. This is a very difficult bird to see in Australia. I was pretty excited. I was pumped. I looked across at the detention centre, my broad smile disappearing as I saw a little girl standing in the compound staring at me through the razor wire. Her mother came over, avoiding my gaze, and moved her away.

  After almost a week on the island Mike’s countenance started to seem almost as cloudy as the occupants of the detention centre, for although the birding had been pretty outstanding there was nothing Mike hadn’t seen in Australia before. I added twenty species for the year, fourteen of which I couldn’t hope to see anywhere else but Mike forked out a lot of money to come a long way with not a single addition to his life list to show for it. No wonder he was bummed.

  Mike’s contribution to the birding scene in Australia has been immense and not just because of the number of hours he’s logged in the field, or the number of birds he’s seen but, most importantly, because of his mentoring role. He basically discovered and nurtured some of Australia’s most significant birdwatching talent – people such as Ian May, Chris Corben, Doug Robinson and Peter Lansley – and has provided guidance and support for countless others. Had it not been for Mike I know I would probably have lost interest in birdwatching once I hit my teenage years. It is because Mike invested the time, and even the money – he paid half my fare for boat trips because at the time my family couldn’t afford to send me – that my interest in bird-watching was able to withstand the competing claims of mates, girls, sport and beer. The fact that I am still a birdwatcher has a lot to do with Mike’s influence. And as I curl up at night with a copy of The Atlas of Australian Birds instead of the soft body of a loving partner, I like to think that Mike had something to do with it. It helps to blame other people for your loneliness.

  The first time I met Mike was at Seaford Swamp. It was a lazy Saturday in March 1980 and I was riding my bike around the grounds of the primary school when I spied two men park their car and head out towards the swamp. Apart from my teacher, I’d never met any other birdwatchers before. Trying to be very cool I approached them and asked, ‘You guys birdwatchers, are you?’

  The older one (Mike) answered, ‘Why yes we are. Are you?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Seen anything interesting lately?’ asked Doug Robinson, the younger man.

  I brought myself up to my full eleven-year-old height and proudly told them of my latest amazing sighting: ‘Yeah, I saw a Blue-winged Shoveler here last week.’ Now known as the Australasian Shoveler, I was ever so pleased to have seen my first one the week before.

  ‘Yes, it’s been a very good year for them, there’s been quite a few around,’ responded Mike. He was not trying to belittle me, he was just stating a simple fact. The effect was to instantly deflate my cockiness.

  ‘Oh. Have you seen anything interesting?’

  ‘Well, there has been a Wood Sandpiper about.’

  My eyes bulged out of their sockets. I’d read about the Wood Sandpiper in my Gould League Rare Birds book. And to think it could be living here on my swamp. Mike asked if I’d like to join them. I explained I didn’t have my binoculars or gumboots on me but if they could wait ten minutes I would dash home and get them.

  My mum later said that she’d never seen me move so fast in my entire life. Apparently I burst into the house, blurted, ‘Mum, there’s two men down at the swamp who said I could go birdwatching with them!’ grabbed my binoculars and was gone, before she had time to ask who exactly these strange men were yet giving her plenty of time to ponder whether she would ever see her son alive again.

  I saw the Wood Sandpiper as well as a couple of other new birds and, much to my Mum’s relief, I was returned unharmed. Or so she thought, for Mike had planted in me the seeds of my doom as I became totally hooked on twitching. And now, twenty-two years on, that chance encounter at the swamp had led to me sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean still looking for new birds. Oddly enough, after all those years this was the longest I had ever spent with Mike in one go. Even we couldn’t rabbit on about birds for the entire time and I gained an insight into aspects of Mike’s life outside birdwatching, such as the fact that his father was a World War I veteran who lost a hand at Gallipoli.

  I also gained an insight into what makes Mike Australia’s premier twitcher. I
t is impossible to say who is the best birdwatcher, it is such an esoteric concept, but by the one thing that can be measured – how many birds someone has seen – Mike is streets ahead of his nearest rivals. Some (mainly other twitchers who haven’t seen as many birds as him) may say uncharitably it is due to his longevity (he started in 1964) or that he has been fortunate enough to be able to afford a lifestyle that allows him to travel at a moment’s notice to chase after birds. But this is a churlish and superficial analysis. There are plenty of birders who have been around longer than Mike, many with access to greater funds, so why haven’t they knocked Mike off his perch?

  One answer is his passion. He simply loves birds and bird-watching. For him it is not simply a numbers game. I’ve seen him get almost as excited feeding a relatively common Grey Butcherbird in his backyard, pointing out the field marks that distinguish it as a female, as he is ticking off a new bird for his Australian list. In fact his passion for birding sees him out in the field so often that he has discovered more firsts for Australia than just about anybody. This is something you don’t regularly achieve with mere dumb luck. Finding rarities is akin to goldmining. You may get the occasional dolt who strikes it big when they stub their toe on a huge nugget, but the miner with the greatest longevity is the one who can read the country, assess the lie of the land and search accordingly. He may not strike it rich every time but he won’t ever be far off.

 

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