I arrived back in Hobart from a holiday in Europe at the start of the month feeling the cold. The striated pardalotes were feeling it, too, because they had delayed nesting.
The migratory pardalotes are the first migrants to arrive at the end of winter and the first to scout nest sites.
On cue in mid-August I began to hear their song and then saw these cavity nesters entering favourite nesting sites, gaps in the sandstone walls built to channel the Sandy Bay Rivulet through the Waterworks Reserve.
After six weeks traveling I returned expecting to see noisy fledglings being fed at the entrance to the cavities but there was little activity.
The warning signs that the nesting season for the pardalotes and other species might have been delayed was there when I had stepped from the aircraft at Hobart airport on November 1. A cold wind blowing from the south-west demanded I light a fire when I got home, something I rarely do beyond the end of September.
It certainly appeared the opposite of an Indian summer was in play. I soon dubbed the cold snap “winter’s ghost”. The black currawongs that move to alpine habitat at the start of spring after sheltering closer to the coast in winter were stilling hanging in, their musical calls echoing around the Waterworks Valley. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos were also still in abundance, adding weight to the old Hobart saying that the sight of cockatoos in town signals snow on the mountain. The day I saw them, two weeks short of the official start of summer, there was a further dusting of snow coating the summit of kunanyi/Mt Wellington.
The lack of breeding activity was confirmed by a local bird guide Denis Abbott who had led the Waterworks Landcare group’s annual birdwatching walk while I was on holiday. However, the three cuckoo species to commonly visit southern Tasmania in spring and summer – the pallid, fan-tailed and shining bronze cuckoos – were in good voice and it raised the question whether a dearth of breeding activity in prey species might hamper their own parasitic breeding efforts.
It was an interesting question to ponder as I went on my rounds around the reserve on my return from Europe.
Monitoring a local birding patch, in which breeding and population trends can become apparent over time, throws up all sorts of conundrums and riddles. Birds are in fact barometers of unpredictable, changing weather patterns. As I noted in this column earlier this year, the warmer winters we’ve had in recent years has prompted many striated pardalotes to stay in Tasmania and not leave for their wintering grounds in western New South Wales and beyond.
Perhaps these birds are choosing to nest later, irrespective of the late cold snaps. What’s the rush when an Indian summer in autumn might be on the cards?