by Sean Dooley
While in the supermarket I bumped into a British couple who were twitching their way around the country. They were travelling in the opposite direction to me so I was eager to hear how they’d gone with the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren at Victoria River Crossing. I’d seen it there before and hadn’t factored in a back-up location. They grumbled that they’d spent two full days there without a sniff, a response that threw me into a mild panic.
I arrived at the crossing minutes before dark and headed straight from the roadhouse down toward the long grass near the river’s edge where the wrens should have been. It was very humid, with thick clouds encroaching overhead and a light drizzle starting to fall. Not exactly great conditions. Within ten seconds of entering the habitat I had a party of these beautiful birds around me, the male with his striking lilac-striped head coming to within a metre. It was hard to believe those Brits had had such difficulty. No wonder the Poms were doing so poorly at cricket – they seem to miss everything.
The birds just kept falling into place. Out in the woodlands near the small town of Pine Creek in the gathering ominous gloom of afternoon storm clouds I managed to find a pair of Chestnut-backed Button-Quail, a bird I had missed out on every time I’d been up this way. I was so worried about finding it that I’d budgeted a couple of days for this one and the Hooded Parrot, which I got onto first thing the next morning. How long could this run continue?
Not that I was complaining as it gave me more time in Kakadu. Kakadu is simply phenomenal. I’m not sure I’m a particularly spiritual person but there is something about the place that made me feel I was in the presence of a higher spiritual force. It is not just the spectacular scenery – you could arguably find more spectacular sandstone cliffs within an hour of Sydney. Perhaps it is the scale, or the abundance of wildlife. Perhaps the fact that it is home to a living culture that has been connected to the place for tens of thousands of years.
My visit would be tragically brief, though, as there were very few new birds left for me. Driving to my first destination I ticked off the first of these, a Partridge Pigeon, beside the road into Gunlom. Gunlom is a waterfall made famous by the first Crocodile Dundee movie. It is also known as Waterfall Creek but I prefer an earlier European name, UDP Falls. UDP stands for Uranium Development Project and it’s a lovely reminder of the past (and current) history of the area. The powers that be think the name might be something of a turnoff for tourists. I love the name and fewer tourists mean fewer disturbances to the White-throated Grasswren for which Gunlom is the spot. The grasswrens live atop the massive escarpment amongst a myriad of boulders, spinifex bushes and crevices into which they can disappear at a moment’s notice. This is what makes them so difficult to see. In 1988 I totally dipped despite three attempts. Then in 1998 I saw them easily. I suspect that by the time most birders make it up the hot, steep climb they are huffing so hard the grasswrens can hear them a mile off.
I hadn’t been planning to do this climb late in the morning but as I had cleaned up at Pine Creek I found myself here a day or so early. Rather than set up camp I figured I should have a crack at these things. By the time I reached the top of the escarpment I was covered in sweat. There were plenty of birds about – White-lined Honeyeater, Sandstone Shrike-thrush, Helmeted Friarbird – but no grasswrens. I stopped to rest on a large boulder from where I could see both the interior of the plateau with its massive sandstone tors and rock formations, and the endless wooded plains below. Once I’d got my breath back and my heart rate down to normal, I could actually take the time to appreciate what a brilliant place this is.
As I gazed slack jawed at the landscape around me, I noticed some movement in the rocks below. In a rush of adrenaline I lifted my binoculars: Variegated Fairy-wrens. Damn. But hang on, there was something else, much bigger and darker. They instantly disappeared into the rock crevices below. They had the advantage: a quick flight down a rock-face takes them a few seconds; it took me at least five minutes to clamber up, down and around the piles of rocks. After leading me a merry dance they finally relented and a pair of White-throated Grasswrens deigned to show themselves, giving me surprisingly good views. Perhaps they were rewarding me for effort. They are exceptionally handsome birds: quite large, almost blackbird-sized, and strikingly patterned with rich chestnut, black and bold white streaks.
Seeing these birds made me feel great. Top birds, stunning backdrop, now I could get out of this sweatbox. I stopped at the pool above the falls and celebrated my sighting with a welcome skinny dip. The water was deep, cool and soothing, and I was lost in the utter delights of the sensation when a tourist party loomed over the ridge, sending me scrambling for my clothes and cutting short my Blue Lagoon moment.
It was only when I was back down from the escarpment that I realised I had seen neither Banded Fruit-Dove nor the Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeon up there. The fruit-dove didn’t surprise me but the rock-pigeon was a worry – every other time I’d been up on the escarpment I’d almost been kicking them out of the way while searching for the grasswrens. They were probably easier to see first thing in the morning, spending much of the heat of the day sensibly sheltering in the shadows of rock overhangs.
I’d heard of a place called Stag Creek not far from Gunlom that was supposed to be good for Banded Fruit-Dove. I’d never been able to find it before and when I did this time, with the help of a guidebook, I was not impressed. The book mentioned that it was an old mining site but what it failed to mention was that there were signs everywhere warning that the area was radioactive because this was an old uranium mine site. Here was a dilemma I’d never encountered before. Continue on and I risked radiation exposure. Turn away and I might dip out on a new species. The choice was clear. I pushed my way past the sign and looked for the bird. After an hour and a half all I had to show for it was a series of bites from potentially radioactive ants and boots stained with a worryingly bright orange mud – oh, and that third testicle was coming along quite nicely.
Next day I was out at Nourlangie Rock where both species were known to occur. Nourlangie also happens to be home to one of the finest examples of Aboriginal rock art in existence. Though I spent a day and a half with my neck craned skywards scanning for pigeons, even I couldn’t help but be moved by the rock galleries filled with images going back thousands of years. At this time of year there are hardly any tourists so for much of the day I had the entire hallowed turf to myself. This is Australia’s Sistine Chapel – but after a hot, fruitless day’s searching I was ready to blaspheme in any language. I took one final walk around the circuit. Feeding quietly on the berries of a small rainforest tree growing in the shadow of the main rock was a pair of Banded Fruit-Doves. I wondered whether I’d been oblivious to their gentle presence all day. Still no rock-pigeons, though.
Niven McCrie in Darwin had mentioned a place near the East Alligator River where he regularly saw the pigeons so next morning I was out first thing, pounding the beat on the Bardedjilidji Sandstone Walk (pronounced, I gather, bar-de-jilly) which meanders around a small sandstone outcrop. I didn’t find the birds. I did the walk again later when the sun was well up and the still air was starting to really steam. That’s when I saw not one, but three Chestnut-quilled Rock-Pigeons. I was naturally very relived and happy to finally get this bird, which I noticed has a ridiculously small head in comparison to the rest of its body. It is a plump, chunky pigeon, almost the size of a city pigeon, but with a head seemingly the size of a marble.
With nothing more to add in Kakadu I had to leave before three days were up. This was the recurring tragedy of the Big Twitch – my quest took me to some of the most amazing, exotic locations imaginable and then I’d have to leave as soon as my mission was accomplished. After picking up White-browed Crake at Fogg Dam and Rainbow Pitta (with that gorgeous blue shoulder patch) at Howard Springs, I arrived in Darwin with only two or three required species to get. There I picked up Zitting Cisticola on my first attempt (sounds like something you’d hear in a public health campaign, doesn�
�t it? ‘Sean was a happy, healthy young man until he went to Darwin and picked up Zitting Cisticola. Now he can’t show his face in polite society and it really hurts when he pees. And later in life he is at risk of developing cisticular cancer.’) At the beginning of the year I imagined I’d be spending at least a couple of weeks based in Darwin, because of its proximity to so many good birds, but all I needed to get now were Oriental Cuckoo, Little Ringed Plover and Chestnut Rail.
The cuckoo proved elusive, as is characteristic of this migratory species. There had been plenty about the week before I arrived but none showed while I was there, though I’d have another chance at this in North Queensland. More disheartening was the disappearance of the Little Ringed Plover. One had been at the sewage works since November – Niven McCrie had seen it the day before I arrived – but we looked both days over the weekend and it had gone, no doubt out onto the local floodplains which were starting to fill as more and more rain fell. The wet season hadn’t been officially declared but it was getting very close.
The Chestnut Rail was a very tough proposition – in fact nobody had seen any since late September. I haunted various mangrove habitats around Darwin looking for it. Under the canopy of the mangroves there is no breeze to circulate the air and it became a stultifyingly hot vigil. Luckily I was staying at my friend Sal’s place, and though she didn’t have air-conditioning she had the next best thing: a swimming pool. If I got too hot during the night I simply donned my togs and went for a midnight swim. It was amazing who you’d bump into in the pool at that time of night.
After five days I was finished. I couldn’t keep wasting my time on one bird when between here and North Queensland there were potentially twenty other species I could get. I was packed and ready to leave but as the tide was just right on my final morning, I figured it was worth one last shot, so I headed for a patch of mangroves next to a new canal development. (On one side of the retaining wall were the dank, wonderful mangroves teeming with life; on the other side, sitting on landfill, were modern houses and manicured lawns. Why is it that building the Great Aussie Dream Home invariably involves destroying other creatures’ homes?)
Within ten minutes I heard their clattering, braying call. I played the tape and – oh so casually for a bird that had remained steadfastly hidden for so long – a Chestnut Rail sauntered out onto the open mud. For a good five seconds it looked at me imperiously with its red eyes then, realising this was not how the usual script went, it panicked and dashed off madly into the thick of the mangroves.
That was enough for me. The finishing line in Queensland beckoned. A hundred kilometres south at Adelaide River the rain was pounding so hard from the black sky I couldn’t see more than five metres in front of me. The wet season had just kicked in – I had made it out just in time.
CHAPTER 33
14 December, Mount Isa, Queensland:
687 species
It is hot around Mount Isa, very hot. But the heat is of a different nature to the oppressive humidity of the Top End. Four hundred kilometres from the coast it is much drier and, as strange as it seems, wandering about the bush in thirty-eight degree heat comes as sheer relief. Not that I should still have been there, at least not for the three days I had spent wandering disconsolately around the scrub brushing flies out of my face, swearing even more profusely than I was sweating. The cause of my misery and discomfort? More bloody grasswrens.
I had already tried for Carpentarian Grasswren, a smaller, slightly less impressive version of White-throated Grasswren, at the traditional site for them near the isolated town of Borroloola. This new site I was at, about seventy kilometres from Mount Isa, was apparently far more reliable. Local birdwatcher Bob Forsyth had even built a little stone cairn at the prime location housing a twitch-ers’ visitors’ book. Whenever I was back at camp I would torment myself by looking through its dusty pages. It read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Australian and international twitching, and nearly everyone had eventually scored with the grasswren. As each day passed with no luck it became more and more infuriating to read. ‘Him?’ I thought. ‘He wouldn’t recognise a Carpentarian if it came up and bit him on the – Oh, come on, that absolute duffer saw four? Impossible.’ In the end I had to ban myself from reading it.
Things had been going pretty well up to this point. Sure, I had detoured three hundred kilometres to view a spot where Grey Falcons had been seen, but I’d come to expect that from Grey Falcons because they don’t exist. Back on track I was heading south and east, moving out from the tropical woodland of the Top End and onto the open plains of the Barkly Tableland. It was an amazing trip. Every kilometre takes you further into the dry country. The trees start to become more stunted and spread further apart until you are on a virtually treeless plain of staggering proportions. This vast expanse of Mitchell Grass was my last hope for Flock Bronzewing. As the day neared its end I searched the flat horizon for the telltale bulge of a turkey nest dam. The plan was to wait by one until dusk in the hope that the bronzewings would come in to drink. It sounded easy but having missed out on these pigeons in the South Australian deserts I was wary. This wariness turned to major panic when every turkey nest I found turned out to be completely dry. Nothing would be coming in to drink at these.
With the sun hovering low in the sky I spied a windmill about halfway to the horizon and made for it. As I approached, a party of about fifteen plump Flock Bronzewings was circling the dam near the windmill. Sure, it wasn’t the forty thousand I could have seen near Birdsville, but I only needed one and these fifteen birds wheeling about in the sunset were one of the most welcome sights of the year.
And then I arrived in hell. Around four o’clock on my first afternoon I managed to hear the squeak of a grasswren. Next morning at the same spot I did a bit better – I saw the tail end of one scamper into a spinifex clump. Over the next two days the situation didn’t improve. The bush here is sparse woodland with a spinifex understorey. It all looks the pretty much the same which explains, though not excuses, how I managed to get lost one day despite having GPS and a compass. I climbed to a small ridge under a fiercely blazing sun and sat down under a scraggly gum tree to try and work out my bearings. There was no sign of my camp. All around me was wilderness.
A hazy figure seems to materialise before me. Perhaps it is a fellow lost soul – or perhaps I’d been in the sun too long for it assumed the form of Dick Smith. Prodding his thick prescription glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, he insisted I claim the Carpentarian Grasswren: I replied that I didn’t really see it properly.
‘Seriously Sean, what else could it be?’ Dick demanded testily.
‘Female Variegated Fairy-wren?’ I postulated.
‘Oh come on! It was way too dark. And big. What about the streaking on the back and the thick tail? It had to be a Carp.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t see it well enough.’
‘You saw the Grey Grasswren for about a half a second longer, yet you’re claiming that. What’s the difference?’
‘I got all the crucial features on the Grey Grasswren. I just don’t feel happy about claiming this one – I didn’t get the essence of the bird.’
‘Oh, who gives a shit about the essence, Dooley!? Just tick the goddam thing. You might not get to seven hundred without it. You won’t make King of the Nerds if you don’t get to seven hundred!’
As tempting as it was, especially after he added the promise of a lifetime’s supply of Dick’s True Blue Chest Rub, I decided that to claim the Carpentarian Grasswren would go against everything I wanted to get out of the Big Twitch. Dick Smith wasn’t happy and disappeared in a plume of asthma puffer spray. It took me another hour to find my way back to my camp.
To give myself a break from the energy sapping, demoralising patrolling of this uninviting habitat, and to get away from any more creepy visions, I decided to drive into Mount Isa, ostensibly to be within phone range so I could contact Bob Forsyth and find out any local goss from him. Turned out Bob was in Cairns, where I
should have been that very minute. While in Mount Isa I tried for another grasswren, the Kalkadoon, another bird that would be elevated to full species status when the new checklist came out.
I tried a couple of likely looking spinifex-clad hills with no luck. On Bob’s advice I also tried Mica Creek to the south of the town. Eventually I heard the high pitched call typical of a grasswren and was trying to home in on it when a couple of locals turned up riding motorbikes. Their revving, whiny engines echoed through the valley negating any chance of hearing the birds again. I trudged back down to my car and began the long drive to my bush campsite. Realising I needed fuel, I turned back into town again. Too late I realised that I had driven past the servo where I could use a discount fuel coupon. I hung a u-turn at the next lights and was immediately pulled over by a police car.
The officer was one of those typical Queensland cops, big and scary. He asked me why I had made the u-turn. Trying to be polite, I pointed out the service station, saying I was trying to get there and as there was no traffic, I thought it would be safe to make the turn. He informed me that it is illegal to make a u-turn at traffic lights in Queensland. I pleaded that, having only just arrived in his fair state, I was ignorant of this local law. (Later I discovered it is also an offence in Victoria – who’d have thought it?) The cop cut me no slack and smirked as he told me it was an expensive lesson to learn. He took my licence and went to write me a ticket.
Didn’t he realise he was dealing with a twitcher who had just spent three days in the heat dipping out on a bird he desperately needed? That’s like putting a tasty German tourist in front of a hungry crocodile – the croc is bound to snap. I lost the plot completely. Stupid really when you consider the size of this man-mountain, and I knew he would probably have loved nothing better than to beat the crap out of a weedy greenie agitator. But I went off my head at him. I’m not sure what about exactly, but I let him know I’d had a gutful. Luckily (for me as much as for him) he just handed my licence back and departed. I drove the car the remaining twenty metres to the pumps and got out. The laughing attendant behind the perspex window bellowed at me, ‘We close at eight-thirty!’ with a delighted sneer in her voice. I looked at the clock. It was eight thirty-eight.