Although the early bird is said to catch the worm, it was not be at the Waterworks Reserve a few weeks ago.
I’m usually a late starter but I had set out ultra-early to do some reconnaissance for a pair of American birders who wanted to see some of our endemic species.
I had in mind both the beautiful and the curious, like the green rosella and the “turbo-chook”, the Tasmanian native-hen, but I was soon stopped in my tracks by a possible sighting of one of the less spectacular species, the dusky robin.
The “sad robin,” as it is known from its melancholic song, is certainly in a sad state of affairs.
It is in rapid decline across the state – its numbers estimated to have halved in the past decade – and even more troubling is that a reason for this collapse in population cannot be established.
The dusky is our only endemic robin and lives in the shadow of the three more colourful family members found here – the scarlet, flame and pink robins – which are all found in the reserve.
As its name suggests, the dusky robin has a dull brown-grey appearance, with only its slightly larger size and a faint beige wing bar separating it from the generally brown female robins of the other species.
The decline of the dusky robin has been showing up in the increasingly popular Birdlife Australia Birdata surveys conducted by both professional and amateur bird-watchers and my own evidence, although largely anecdotal, reveals it is been at least a year since the robin has been seen in areas of the Waterworks where it was once common.
Although falling numbers of specific species are often associated with habitat loss, this cause cannot be attributed to the dusky’s decline with any certainty.
The dusky robin lived in harmony with the first inhabitants of Tasmania for millennia and even with the arrival of the European settlers, it managed to ride the wave of disruption to the natural environment.
The selective felling of the bigger trees appeared to create an environment which suited a robin that prefers open woodland and in the early days of settlement the species acquired the name of “stump robin”, using the remains of trees as a launching pad to snatch insects on the ground.
Two centuries on, the decline of the dusky robin is perplexing because no single cause can be found. Certainly drought and the loss of insect prey – dare I mention climate change? – may be to blame and research is ongoing.
My possible sighting of a dusky at the Waterworks proved to be a false alarm.
I can only speculate it was an all-brown female pink robin I saw; with just a quick glimpse at a distance so I couldn’t get a firm identification.
So the hunt for the dusky goes on.