Every time I see a swift parrot I am filled with dread at the thought that it might be the last one I see in the wild.
Numbers of swift parrots are in freefall and so when a flock turned up at Mount Nelson in the spring birders rushed to see them, as I did, fearing we might not get the chance again.
Birds are too precious to lose and with one in six of Australian bird species threatened with extinction this fact is brought into sharp focus by a recently published book, Enchantment by Birds. The author, Russell McGregor, takes us into the world of birds and birders by anchoring his stories to 22 species.
With declining sightings of the “swiftie” in mind, I was particularly interested to read about the fate of the only Australian mainland bird to become extinct, the paradise parrot, and the account of the last remaining person to see it in the flesh.
Eric Zillmann, now aged 101, spotted the parrot in 1938 on his parents’ property in the Bundaberg region of Queensland. He was 15 at the time and reflects: “I am humbled by what I regard as the most uplifting experience of my life.”
When I arrived in Tasmania two decades ago the swift parrot population was estimated at about 2000 mature birds. It is now down to about 700 individuals, and each year continues to slide as their blue gum habitat is logged, the main reason for parrot decline, with predation by introduced sugar gliders also to blame.
Although I highlight the plight of both the swift and paradise parrots, Enchantment by Birds is not just concerned about extinction. Its fascinating stories range widely from squabbles over bird names to the everyday enjoyment of the magpie’s carolling, to the evolution of citizen science, to the boom in birding tourism. Connecting the chapters is the observation that ”birdwatching allows urban people to reach out to the wild”.
Scanning the book for species seen in Tasmania I came across one featuring the collared sparrowhawk. The chapter in fact was less about separating the sparrowhawk from its similar cousin, the brown goshawk, as I had anticipated, but the evolution of field guides. One 1940s book simply published a single picture of both species with the words “goshawk and sparrowhawk – same pattern”. The American ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson had already started to publish books with what were termed “diagnostic field marks” to identify birds and I learned from Enchantment by Birds that my “on the wing” predecessor in the Sunday Tasmanian, Michael Sharland, was the first in Australia to use the technique in his Tasmanian birds: how to identify them, published in 1945.
When Sharland wrote his book the swift parrot was a common species. How times have changed.
Enchantment by Birds, by Russell McGregor, is published by Scribe, $39.99