The mournful cries of yellow-tailed black cockatoos hung in the mist as runners lined up at the start of the weekly Queen’s Domain Park Run.
I had joined them in an exercise that was not supposed to be about birding, more an exercise about just that – exercise – after an extended holiday period drifting into the end of summer had taken a toll on my waistline.
Despite my preoccupation with my growing weight, the birds still featured as they always do with any activity undertaken in Hobart’s great outdoors.
But first the fun run, organised every Saturday morning at 9am for those game enough to tackle the five-kilometre course, in all weathers.
Because my jogging days are long behind me I was a little concerned that this might be an event solely for runners but I was pleased to see a fair contingent of speed walkers, some with dogs.
As the whistle blew for the start along the sealed track just north of the Crossroads soccer fields on the Domain, a pair of forest ravens joined the black cockies in a chorus to see the runners off.
A low-lying mist bringing a fine rain blotted out distant views of kunanyi/Mt Wellington and, nearer to hand, the roofs of north Hobart and then the still waters of the Derwent. But all the same, it bathed the Domain in an eerie beauty, the peppermint gums and she-oaks standing like ghosts lining the runners’ route.
It was not only the chill stillness in air which told me autumn had arrived nine days previously. The woods were missing the summer songs of the migratory birds, including the cuckoos, black-faced cuckoo-shrikes and satin flycatchers.
The welcome swallows were also recently departed from the cricket pitch at the Crossroads, where they hawk insects all summer long, and the harsh calls of noisy miners had replaced their merry twitter.
The Domain is a treasured open space with an environment which largely mirrors that seen by the first European settlers before much of the Tasmanian landscape was changed so dramatically by agricultural and residential development.
As I have so often noted in these columns, the beauty of bird-watching is that it can be conducted alongside other activities. In my case, listening for and spotting birds took my mind of the exertion of a walk that was originally designed with a keep-fit motive.
Birds aside, it was good to be among about 50 fellow keep-fit travellers on an autumnal morning. And during the power walk I made a decision to visit the reserve more frequently, to make it another location to take a measure of the changing seasons, and note birds arriving and departing, and nesting.
For the record, 30 bird species were noted as I completed the course in just under an hour, the average time for participants being 31 minutes.
And as for the canines in the park run, I have to confess I was beaten by a dog – but there was some consolation in the fact it was greyhound.