It might have been a hot and sunny day, but I knew immediately that winter was on the way when the harsh, metallic call of a crescent honeyeater rang out across my garden.
In the same way that the welcome swallow bookmarks spring and summer between the months of September and February, the crescent honeyeater marks the beginning and end of the period when nature goes into its own form of lockdown.
Although both species are migratory, plotting their course by the stars and planets and the earth’s magnetic field, the honeyeater chooses a less arduous journey from breeding to wintering grounds, which are within Tasmania.
The old saying in Hobart that the arrival of yellow-tailed black cockatoos in the city “heralds snow on the mountain” might well apply to the crescent honeyeater.
Just as the nights begin to chill it can be seen and heard in the suburbs, noisily flitting about late-flowering plants in gardens and getting into fights with a resident family member, the new holland honeyeater.
I heard the crescent honeyeater a little earlier this year, in the third week of March, as I put out the washing on a fine morning. Birds have an innate sense of timing and this male feeding on the flowers of a banksia along the garden fence alerted me not to be fooled by the Indian summer.
My wife and I had booked tickets for the open-air deck at the State Cinema that evening and I warned her to pack extra blankets for the night out.
The crescent honeyeater is easily identified by its strident “egypt, egypt” call, usually delivered from a concealed perch within thick vegetation, especially banksia, bottlebrush and grevillea in suburban gardens. Viewed in the open, it presents itself as a relatively small bird, smaller than a new holland honeyeater. Although it generally mixes light and dark shades of grey in its plumage, its flight feathers display striking shafts of golden-yellow. As its name suggests, it also carries a distinctive black crescent pattern on both sides of its breast.
As the swallows and other mainland migrants fan out across the state in early spring, the crescent honeyeater and another family member, the eastern spinebill, forsake the lowlands closer to the coast and head for the high country where, as they weather warms, they feed on the pollen and nectar of alpine vegetation during the breeding season.
The crescent honeyeaters form long-term bonds but it is left to the female to build a bulky cup-shaped nest, low in the centre of a mountain shrub like a kerosene bush.
Hours after hearing the crescent honeyeater, a beautiful full moon rising from beyond the Eastern Shore presented a fitting backdrop to our night out watching, Death on the Nile. And it had been wise to pack the extra blankets as the air chilled rapidly after the sun had set.