A group of bird nerds – popularly known as “twitchers” – were all a twitter last month when a species normally seen in the tropics and sub-tropics, the eastern koel, was heard calling from a tree in Hobart.
An office worker who grew up in northern New South Wales heard the distinctive, far-carrying cry of a koel while eating a sandwich in the heart of the city, Franklin Square.
There could be no mistake about the source of the loud, ascending call which usually rings out as storm clouds gather in the heat of summer, hence the eastern koel also being known as the “rain bird”.
Twitchers are known to rush about the state clocking new species for their life-lists of birds recorded. So the sighting of a koel, the first ever for Tasmania, promised to be quite an event.
My twitching days may be long gone but I keep my ear to the ground and the morning of the sighting – or should I say “hearing” because the bird was not seen as far as I know – I became aware of it on the “twitchersphere”.
I know the species well from my days living in Townsville and felt confident I would be able to identify it either from sight or sound. In Queensland, each spring I would wait for these beautiful birds – a member of the cuckoo family – to arrive from their wintering grounds in Papua New Guinea. The males are jet-black in colour with striking red eyes. The females are in a more muted, speckled brown plumage. It is also a big bird, about the size of a yellow wattlebird.
The eastern koel only comes as far south as Nowra in New South Wales and so the apparent arrival of one in Tasmania sparked much speculation about how it came to be here. Climate change might be an obvious source of speculation but from my experience Tasmania has so far not been subject to mass invasions of species more at home in warmer areas.
Another explanation for the koel’s arrival here could be the simple fact that it got its bearings confused when setting off back to its wintering grounds, heading due south instead of north. This is often an explanation for birds arriving in unlikely places.
Although the office worker was convinced he had heard a koel, the report has not been officially accepted because this would require firm evidence, namely in the form of a photograph.
For once putting on my twitcher’s cap, I could not resist checking out the report myself. I was not alone; waiting to cross Macquarie Street from the CBD I was told by the proprietor of the Atlas Cafe he had done a roaring trade supplying a steady stream of twitchers with take-away coffee.
With my own flat-white in hand, I took up position on a bench in Franklin Square hoping for a sighting. I drew a blank, however, and with Coronavirus restrictions still in place I was forced instead to self-isolate from an inquisitive silver gull.