Day 3- 21/10/10 First day of surveys

It’s easy to forget how cold the outback can get; thankfully in this regard I was well prepared. We awoke at 6.30am to 11°C temperatures, and pretty much immediately piled into the car; the day goes fast in the desert, and we had a fair bit to get used to, whilst covering a fair amount of ground. We were to do seven sites that morning, all within relatively close range of one another. Navigation was to be done entirely by GPS; as Jeremy was the driver, I had a nervous promotion from passenger to chief navigator. As pieces of technology go, GPSs are by no means difficult to use, though at this point I had never extensively used one, so it was a pretty steep learning curve. We never got significantly lost, though I will outright admit I am much better navigating cities and reading off maps than I am thrown into a wild setting with precious few landmarks. I’m pretty sure Jeremy got narked on a couple of occasions, though in fairness he probably also appreciated that I got better at it.

With little experience of the fauna suite present, we were faced with quite a challenge. Many of the birds were utterly new, and many species had several highly different calls. In addition, most birds restricted their activities to a narrow band of time, roughly between 8.30 and 11am. Such behaviour was obviously dictated by the daily heat, and as such it made birding outside of such times a frustrating endeavour; earlier in the day, and we would hear birds calling but never see them; later in the day, and everything would fall silent and motionless. All this meant we had to develop an affinity for calls very quickly, and while we got better over time, we were still frequently second-guessing ourselves by the end of surveys.


All said, it was still exciting whenever we got visuals of anything in the first few days, as it would almost invariably be new. That first morning, we saw our first White-fronted Honeyeater (Purnella albifrons), which, along with the Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater (Acanthagenys rufeogularis) (above), would prove to be the commonest honeyeaters on the sanctuary. The Chestnut-crowned Babblers from the previous evening were seen again, and proved to be a nesting family group, while we also had good views of Yellow-rumped Thornbills (Acanthiza chrysorrhoa), Brown Falcon, Mulga Parrot, and a handful of other new ones: Grey-fronted Honeyeater (Lichenostomus plumulus), Red-capped Robin (Petroica goodenovii) (top of article), Chestnut-rumped Thornbill (Acanthiza uropygialis) (above) and Inland Thornbill (A. pusilla). Morning activity quickly warmed up, then died down, and we retreated to base for a spot of lunch.

In the afternoon, we teamed up with the third volunteer, a friendly bloke named Ian, to do some Black-eared Miner (Manorina melanotis) surveys. For the uninitiated, the Black-eared is a close relative of everyone’s favourite suburban bird, the Noisy Miner (M. melanocephala). One of Australia’s most endangered birds, less than 300 still survive, mostly in northeastern South Australia, with small isolated populations in Victoria and NSW. Interbreeding with the much commoner Yellow-throated Miner is one of the main threats to this species, a fact made very clear by the info sheet we were handed: there were a few BEMs on the sanctuary, but heavy interbreeding meant that there were far more hybrids than pure-breds, there would be more of the former than the latter, and would be distinguished by thresholds- a little more black on the face, a little more white on the rump. Given that the total number of pure-breds was estimated to be not more than 20, it was a daunting prospect.

So it transpired that we ended up in the mallee at 3pm, with a loudhailer and mp3 player for voice playback, blasting the most god-awfully brain-grating call this side of the Great Divide, hoping to find one of Australia’s rarest birds, and wouldn’t you know we found them (left). The playback brought in first a flock of three or four, followed quickly by another flock of five. Immediately the visual differences were striking: most of the birds were hybrids, with only one or two promising-looking individuals. Jeremy pelted about the bush, frantically trying to keep up with individual birds as they flitted through the trees and getting as many photos as possible. Five minutes later, they were gone.

We were confident that we had spotted up to two potential candidates, but it was only upon close examination of the photos back at base that we could confirm what we had seen: at least one pure Black-eared Miner, amongst another six hybrids crossing the entire range of hybridisation from almost pure Yellow-throat to not-quite-Black-eared. If nothing else, this was a great vindication for the employment of photography for birdwatching. The fleeting nature of the sighting, the unfriendliness of the terrain and the tricky features of the animal all meant this was one of the hardest spots we’d ever done, and it really was only because we had photos, taken not for aesthetic but purely to aid diagnosis, that we could have known what we had seen, and this by birding standards was one of the easier birds to diagnose, reasonably tricky but with sufficiently distinct features to warrant a relatively straightforward diagnosis. The birding world is replete with infinitely harder groups of birds-greenbuls, reed-warblers, phylloscopine warblers, whole complexes of dozens of species, many with overlapping ranges, distinguishable only by a darker dash of brown here, a shorter streak of white there, a broader bill here, a longer tail there.

In a world where the difference between buff and rufous at 200 yards is all the difference, it is confounding that there are still people, styling themselves traditionalists, who scoff at what they perceive as the intrusion of tech-head whippersnappers into the slow-paced, methodical world of birdwatching, refusing anything more advanced than a telescope to aid their diagnoses. Ostensibly, the reason for this is that it would take too long to operate a camera rig, and most birders balk at such complication. Forgetting that this is palpably untrue –most camera rigs fit for the purpose can fire off reels of shots in the same time as it takes to observe the bird through lenses, and it in any case misses the point that aesthetic is not the aim- how quickly though does an argument devolve into one of principle! To them now, anything not viewed through the lenses of binoculars, scopes or their own eyes and ID’d on the spot is ‘cheating’. The irony is that many such people are some of the most passionate pursuers of ornithological interests, falling firmly in the “twitching” rather than the “birding” category, yet they resent a method that not only allows for a more accurate diagnosis of the organism, but would actually aid their ticking cause.

The only explanation I can offer is that these people have yet to appreciate the inherent value of birdwatching [ironically devaluing it], that there is a point where it has transcended from being the summer evening past-time of old duffers to an endeavour that can actually aid research and conservation. Not only that, but they fail to acknowledge that birdwatching can be made more efficient. These are, I suspect, the same people who dredge up the tedious and frankly ludicrous argument that twitchers do more good for the birding world than ornithologists. Such resentment of encroaching efficiency and professionalism is thankfully only upheld by a minority of birding enthusiasts, folks held back by the inflexibility of their own standards, increasingly out of place in a world of progressives. To borrow a quote, they are analogue players in a digital world. Photography as a tool can add a professional dimension to the world of ornithology, and it augurs well that the younger generations are embracing it as such.


Suitably exhilarated after our miner encounter, we finished off the rest of our transect, cutting through thick mallee punctuated by swales of spinifex growing on the gently rising dunes. It was the late afternoon and activity was picking up. Making our way through some scrub, we hit a flurry of birds: Inland Thornbill, Jacky Winter (Microeca fascinans) (above), White-browed Babbler (Pomatostomus superciliosus) and Chestnut-backed Quail-thrush (Cinclosoma castanotum). The latter two were new for both of us. That evening, we arrived back to news that Scarlet-chested Parrots (Neophema splendida) had been seen again on the property. We were understandably excited: this is one of the harder parrots to find in Australia, due to its erratic irruptive movements and general rarity. A sighting, made in May, was the first time this species had even been recorded in the state for over 50 years. Unfortunately, the sanctuary was thoroughly preoccupied with preparations for a donor event, which meant pestering for sighting coordinates would have to be put on the backburner.