Right on time, the migrant birds are returning to Tasmania for the breeding season. It’s as though their lives run like clockwork.
The metaphor of the clock is not so far-fetched when you think time and timing is so vital to avian lives.
As sure as the neighbourhood clockmaker in Sandy Bay puts out his “now open” sign on the pavement each morning and withdraws it at dusk, the birds attend to their daily rituals.
These, of course, are not performed to the ticking of a clock but by the movement of the sun across the sky which in effect can mean the same thing.
I didn’t need a watch, or indeed a calendar, to know when the striated pardalotes were about to arrive from their wintering grounds on the mainland. It is always during the third week of August when I first hear them, although sometimes they arrive a little earlier on good winds. August 12 is my record.
The welcome swallow might be the traditional harbinger of spring but spring hasn’t sprung until I see the first pardalote before winter has even ended. The swallows always arrive about two weeks later, usually on the first weekend of September.
Although I’ve written much about striated pardalotes in the past, I’ve always concentrated on their reading of nature’s calendar and not their reading of the 24-hour clock.
This year I spent a day in the life of the pardalote and all my casual observations confirm my suspicions that their lives very much mirror our own when it comes to time.
Down at the Waterworks Reserve the day starts early, about the time human alarm clocks are going off.
As soon as they arrive in August guided by not only the sun, but the stars and the earth’s magnetic field, the males flit about the historic sandstone infrastructure looking for nesting sites. The pardalotes, as cavity nesters, exploit gaps between sandstone blocks in which to build nests. Once suitable sites are selected, the task of collecting nesting material begins. There is a feverish activity in the early morning but this dies away after about 11am, when the birds appear to take the siesta known to Spaniards during the hot Iberian summer. The breeding activity begins again in earnest when the sun has lost its power.
My record of the pardalotes’ day, which corresponds with most other woodland species, is more anecdotal than pure science. The weather and availability of food at given times is a factor but for the bird walks I lead in summer with a bird guide friend, Denis Abbott, experience has taught us to always time these to begin at 10am, to ensure we spot our target species while they are active, before they slow down in the heat of mid-day and have a final food-gathering exercise as the sun sets.