Green rosella

The green rosella gently picking at the seeds of a yellow bottlebrush in my garden carried a stature and grace about it that told of a long life well lived.

I had learned during the summer months that the brighter the colours of a rosella, the older the bird and the bright colour of this old fella – especially the bright yellow on the breast and underbelly and iridescent blue in the wings – certainly suggested he had reached an age that in humans is marked by retirement.

Measured in human terms, in the way we talk of dog years, the life expectancy of a rosella at 15 to 20 years must be the equivalent of between 60 and 65 years.

On a chilly autumn day, watching a green rosella in the autumn of its years can put the life of a person reaching retirement into a different sort of perspective.  It’s a good time to contemplate our own lives, and to consider the age-old question of what separates humans from what was termed the “brute creation” in not so distant times.

One thing that certainly separates us and the rest of nature is that birds and animals don’t get to retire, and in turn to contemplate a fundamental change in existence.

The green rosella’s fate, when it is too old to fossick and fly, is to wrap itself in its wings one cold night and slip quietly to that happy hunting ground of native cherry  and bottlebrush seed in the sky or, more grimly, to have his slower movements in the trees betray it to the sharp talons of the marauding brown goshawk.

As a “baby-boomer” retiring just over a year ago I was warned by my doctor to prepare myself for the upheaval of leaving the workforce and the social life that went with it, especially the camaraderie and mateship of a lifetime spent as a journalist.

And friends in the medical profession said that retirees often faced depression, feeling they were no longer constructive members of society. They felt like outsiders, isolated, out on a limb. My friends were worried that the energy I devoted to my bird column, and walking on the mountain and in the woods to gather research, might not be enough to keep me occupied. Even though I pointed out that bird-watching was an ideal pursuit for the retired – keeping people fit and alert – it was suggested I join a men’s shed for companionship, or some other group to keep me involved and active.

On that score I’ve been lucky to have discovered the Hobart City Council’s Bushadventures program in recent years and this has provided a vital contact with new faces to go with my birding. In the past year I have studied flowers on the mountain, along with eucalypts, gone looking for owls and followed in the footsteps of bushranger Rocky Whelan.

I have even ventured outside of the adventures billed purely for adults, one night  gate-crashing a family event,  “going batty” at the Waterworks Reserve in search of bats.

My last outing of autumn was billed a Pinnacle Discovery Walk to study nature in the alpine zone on Mt Wellington.  I had needed a lift of spirits on the snow-covered mountain that morning because I was feeling a little down. I had found the bright yellow feathers of the old rosella on the lawn, the old boy no doubt falling victim to a predator during the early morning as the sun came up.

LOOK again when a flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos passes overhead because there might be a crafty white goshawk travelling with them.

My amateur research into the behaviour of white goshawks in my valley has taught me that they can sometimes be found in association with cockies – if not at the heart of the flock, at its fringe.

And what is surprising is the white cockies appear to tolerate these usurpers even though all my bird books suggest that the fearsome predator should be the avowed enemy of a parrot that on paper could provide a big, tasty meal.

When I first discovered the white goshawk (a white morph sub-species of the grey goshawk more common on the mainland) I was intrigued to find them in the company of white cockies, and reached the conclusion that they were using the cockies as cover, or disguise, in their hunt for other species.

This observation has been confirmed in an article in Australian Birdlife magazine which goes into great detail about the problems of a white bird of prey standing out among largely green foliage, and being easily spotted by nervous birds and small mammals.

As the article by John Peter explained, the goshawks have solved the problem of being easily seen by merely mingling with sulphur-crested cockatoos, birds that other bird species and mammals have no reason to fear.

It leaves the question of why the cockies do not protest, and shriek in horror, when the presence of a white goshawk appears among them.  The author offers another reason for this.

Goshawks are known to take prey the size of white-faced herons but there is no evidence, anywhere in the country, of a white goshawk ever taking a cockatoo or a corella.

The cockies obviously know this and appear to be grateful for the goshawk’s presence, at least in the knowledge that it will not attack them.

I have another theory about goshawk presence among cockies. It could well be that the goshawks act as a kind of “minder” or bodyguard for the cockies, returning the favour of the parrots offering cover by providing protection. With a goshawk around, the cockies can be assured that they will not be attacked by another goshawk species found in Hobart, the brown goshawk, or even the fast-flying peregrine falcon. Raptors – which always have to be in tip-top condition and free of injury to hunt – are wary of getting in confrontations that are not directly related to attacking prey.

After two centuries of persecution the white goshawk has only started to make a comeback to the Hobart area in the past decade, and has become relatively common.

When I first came to live in Hobart 12 years ago I was surprised to note that when white goshawks flew over my garden the resident new holland honeyeaters did not let out an alarm call as they did with other birds of prey. Obviously, because the goshawks had not been seen for so many years, the honeyeaters did not recognise them as a threat.

All that has changed in the intervening years as goshawks have shown their hand – or should I say talons. A more tolerant attitude towards goshawks – particularly among people who keep a favourite goshawk food, chooks – has allowed the raptors back into our lives, even if the honeyeaters might not be too pleased to see them return. When they spot a goshawk, the honeyeaters dive for cover – that’s if the raptor is not posing as a sulphur-crested cockatoo.

The blood-curdling screams rang out across Ridgeway high above Hobart, carrying as far as the Waterworks Reserve in the valley below.

 Blood-curdling and spine-chilling. That’s no exaggeration when describing the cry of the masked owl especially, as on this occasion, it was being magnified four or five times by the use of a loud-hailer.

An “Owls in the Spotlight” event had been organised by the Ridgeway Bushcare group and the city council’s Bush Adventures program and as I covered my ears as the owl cries rang out I hoped that the conservation volunteers in this neck of the woods had alerted the neighbours.

I had thoughts of the police arriving with flashing lights, responding to a report of murder and mayhem in the southern Hobart suburbs.

There are two ways to track down elusive owls, as any birder will tell you. The first method is merely to go to owl territory and wait for the owls to start calling. Usually, at least in my case, this is totally fruitless.

The other is to go on an owl hunt armed with a recording of owl cries – you can hardly describe them as birdsong – and broadcast it through the woods. I’m not a fan of using recordings to attract birds and I do not do it because I believe it can be very intrusive to the birds, especially in the breeding season when they will spend precious hours hunting for a rival supposedly on their patch instead of attending to breeding duties. On this occasion, however, the recordings and the loud-hailer were being used in the interests of science, performed no less by an expert on masked owls and other threatened species, Dr Phil Bell.

Owls have always proved elusive for me, but the portents for this evening were good. In previous days I had received an email from a reader with a picture of a masked owl on his rooftop in West Hobart.

The owl, I was told, had startled the reader’s son by suddenly plumping down with a thud on the roof but the young man still managed to get a picture of it with his mobile phone.

I’ve only once have i had a fleeting glimpse of a masked owl, at Sandfly south of Hobart,  although I hear them often in the Waterworks Reserve. As Dr Bell demonstrated with his set of recordings, the owl call really is scary.

Far more easier on the ear were Dr Bell’s calls of Tasmania’s other resident owl species, the  boobok, which I know to be relatively common at Ridgeway, especially at the spot where the local bushcare group conducted the first part of their owl experiment, the Ridgeway Reserve, at the point where Ridgeway and Chimney Pot Hill roads converge.

A third owl sometimes found in Tasmania, the barn owl, also has a scream for a call, but it is less terrfying than the masked owl’s.

The Ridgeway Reserve is a well-known known barbecue spot and after a feast of snags the owl “music” began. Between the owl sounds, Dr Bell gave a run-down on the natural history of both the masked and boobook owls. In the masked owl’s case, he gave some indication of the reasons for its rarity. In a nutshell, it needs a very large territory, with not only an abundant supply of food but large old-growth tree cavities for nesting.

 We spent about half an hour playing the recordings at the BBQ site without success, before moving on through the white peppermint eucalypts to the Ridgeway Oval, spot-lighting Bennett’s wallabies on the way. No owls at this location either, although we did manage to give some ground-roosting masked lapwings a shock with our recordings.

 As so often happens with nature outings, the target species fails to show, but it is still possible to have an enjoyable time all the same, with enjoyable company.

No owls, but the evening still turned out to be a hoot.

The blood-curdling screams rang out across Ridgeway high above Hobart, carrying as far as the Waterworks Reserve in the valley below.

Blood-curdling and spine-chilling. That’s no exaggeration when describing the cry of the masked owl especially, as on this occasion, it was being magnified four or five times by the use of a loud-hailer.

An “Owls in the Spotlight” event had been organised by the Ridgeway Bushcare group and the city council’s Bush Adventures program and as I covered my ears as the owl cries rang out I hoped that the conservation volunteers in this neck of the woods had alerted the neighbours.

I had thoughts of the police arriving with flashing lights, responding to a report of murder and mayhem in the southern Hobart suburbs.

There are two ways to track down elusive owls, as any birder will tell you. The first method is merely to go to owl territory and wait for the owls to start calling. Usually, at least in my case, this is totally fruitless.

The other is to go on an owl hunt armed with a recording of owl cries – you can hardly describe them as birdsong – and broadcast it through the woods. I’m not a fan of using recordings to attract birds and I do not do it because I believe it can be very intrusive to the birds, especially in the breeding season when they will spend precious hours hunting for a rival supposedly on their patch instead of attending to breeding duties. On this occasion, however, the recordings and the loud-hailer were being used in the interests of science, performed no less by an expert on masked owls and other threatened species, Dr Phil Bell.

Owls have always proved elusive for me, but the portents for this evening were good. In previous days I had received an email from a reader with a picture of a masked owl on his rooftop in West Hobart.

The owl, I was told, had startled the reader’s son by suddenly plumping down with a thud on the roof but the young man still managed to get a picture of it with his mobile phone.

I’ve only once had a fleeting glimpse of a masked owl, at Sandfly south of Hobart,  but I have heard them often in the Waterworks Reserve.  As Dr Bell demonstrated with his set of recordings, the owl call really is scary.

Far more easier on the ear were Dr Bell’s calls of Tasmania’s other resident owl species, the  boobok, which I know to be relatively common at Ridgeway, especially at the spot where the local bushcare group conducted the first part of their owl experiment, the Ridgeway Reserve, at the point where Ridgeway and Chimney Pot Hill roads converge.

A third owl to be occasionally seen in Tasmania, the  barn owl, still has a scream for a call but it is not as terrifying as the masked owl’s.

The Rideway Reserve is a  well-known barbecue spot and after a feast of snags the owl “music” began. Between the owl sounds, Dr Bell gave a run-down on the natural history of both the masked and boobook owls. In the masked owl’s case, he gave some indication of the reasons for its rarity. In a nutshell, it needs a very large territory, with not only an abundant supply of food but large old-growth tree cavities for nesting.

We spent about half an hour playing the recordings at the BBQ site without success, before moving on through the white peppermint eucalypts to the Ridgeway Oval, spot-lighting Bennett’s wallabies on the way. No owls at this location either, although we did manage to give some ground-roosting masked lapwings a shock with our recordings.

As so often happens with nature outings, the target species fails to show, but it is still possible to have an enjoyable time all the same, with enjoyable company.

No owls, but the evening still turned out to be a hoot.

The blood-curdling screams rang out across Ridgeway high above Hobart, carrying as far as the Waterworks Reserve in the valley below.

Blood-curdling and spine-chilling. That’s no exaggeration when describing the cry of the masked owl especially, as on this occasion, it was being magnified four or five times by the use of a loud-hailer.

An “Owls in the Spotlight” event had been organised by the Ridgeway Bushcare group and the city council’s Bush Adventures program and as I covered my ears as the owl cries rang out I hoped that the conservation volunteers in this neck of the woods had alerted the neighbours.

I had thoughts of the police arriving with flashing lights, responding to a report of murder and mayhem in the southern Hobart suburbs.

There are two ways to track down elusive owls, as any birder will tell you. The first method is merely to go to owl territory and wait for the owls to start calling. Usually, at least in my case, this is totally fruitless.

The other is to go on an owl hunt armed with a recording of owl cries – you can hardly describe them as birdsong – and broadcast it through the woods. I’m not a fan of using recordings to attract birds and I do not do it because I believe it can be very intrusive to the birds, especially in the breeding season when they will spend precious hours hunting for a rival supposedly on their patch instead of attending to breeding duties. On this occasion, however, the recordings and the loud-hailer were being used in the interests of science, performed by less by an expert on masked owls and other threatened species, Dr Phil Bell.

Owls have always proved elusive for me, but the portents for this evening were good. In previous days I had received an email from a reader with a picture of a masked owl on his rooftop in West Hobart.

The owl, I was told, had startled the reader’s son by suddenly plumping down with a thud on the roof but the young man still managed to get a picture of it with his mobile phone.

I’ve never seen a masked owl, although I have heard them in the Waterworks Reserve. As Dr Bell demonstrated with his set of recordings, the owl call really is scary.

Far more easier on the ear were Dr Bell’s calls of Tasmania’s other resident owl species, the  boobok, which I know to be relatively common at Ridgeway, especially at the spot where the local bushcare group conducted the first part of their owl experiment, the Ridgeway Reserve, at the point where Ridgeway and Chimney Pot Hill roads converge.

A third owl sometimes found in Tasmania, the barn owl, also makes a scream like the the masked owl, but it is not quite as terrifying.

The Rideway Reserve is a well-known barbecue spot and after a feast of snags the owl “music” began. Between the owl sounds, Dr Bell gave a run-down on the natural history of both the masked and boobook owls. In the masked owl’s case, he gave some indication of the reasons for its rarity. In a nutshell, it needs a very large territory, with not only an abundant supply of food but large old-growth tree cavities for nesting.

We spent about half an hour playing the recordings at the BBQ site without success, before moving on through the white peppermint eucalypts to the Ridgeway Oval, spot-lighting Bennett’s wallabies on the way. No owls at this location either, although we did manage to give some ground-roosting masked lapwings a shock with our recordings.

As so often happens with nature outings, the target species fails to show, but it is still possible to have an enjoyable time all the same, with enjoyable company.

No owls, but the evening still turned out to be a hoot.

Do birds find me, or do I find them? I’ve never been able to work it out but it seems no matter where I go, in the most unlikely of places, interesting species turn up.

This thought came to mind on a rare non-birding outing last month when I took the recently-launched MR-1 ferry to the Museum of Old and New Art at Berriedale.

Until that time, I must have been the only person in Tasmania not to have visited MONA.

“And you can leave the binoculars at home, this is going to be a day free of bird-watching” my wife had insisted as we left for the ferry terminal, recalling many a weekend excursion interrupted by chases for eagles and hawks seen along the route to our the destination.

I wasn’t in the mood to protest because I had overdone the birding, monitoring the autumn migration each day on Mt Wellington and was in need of a non-birding rest.

The gaily-painted fast ferry all the same offered a view of the Derwent I had not seen before.  I had spent days watching its swift progress from up high on the mountain and was eager to give it a go.

Not more than 10 minutes into the trip, on the opposite bank of the Derwent to the Nyrstar zinc works, the ferry suddenly slowed and the captain announced with joy that a white-bellied sea eagle was sitting in a gum overlooking the placid waters of the river. For a brief moment thoughts of the art museum were forgotten for the passengers as they craned their necks for a view of the magnificent eagle, a male in prime, crisp white-and-grey plumage.

My slowness in going to MONA since it opened had nothing really to do with birding commitments, but more to do with my taste in art. I’m not really one for installations, and art that is designed to shock and confront. During a lifetime in the news business I have been confronted and shocked enough and I have always preferred a more tranquil form of art, that of the great British landscape artists of the early 1800s and later the Barbizon School in France, artists who explored “impressionism” in the fields as Monet, Van Gough and Renoir painted everyday life in the streets.

In this vein, I found myself irresistibly drawn to images of birds, and animals, in the galleries of MONA. I was fascinated by the beauty of a stuffed forest raven, ignoring a wider message about mortality contained in an exhibit which also contained two urns containing human ashes, and then was drawn to a treasure trove of nature’s art along with that of the hand of man in the Theatre of the World Exhibition. In Sidney Nolan’s Dog and Duck Hotel of 1948 I found myself focusing on the Australian shelduck in the picture instead of the wider message of translocation and loneliness presented by an outback pub.

By the time I had identified a stuffed masked owl as the Tasmanian sub-species with a richer colour of russet feathers, my wife announced it was time to leave, saying she would come on her own on another occasion.

 The impact of MONA was not lost on me, however.  Instead of looking for crested terns and black-faced cormorants on the return voyage my thoughts were firmly with a sculpture of a suicide bomber I had seen in the galleries, a work depicting the beauty of the human form rising from a base of entrails and blood and bone. I had been shocked and confronted after all. And when I saw the sea eagle again, this time well back from the river, I hardly gave it a second glace. Anyway, I didn’t have my binoculars with me.