The clarion call to prepare for autumn came this year from the yellow-throated honeyeaters which make my garden their home.
Autumn usually announces itself with a sudden chill in the air at dawn and dusk, the musty smell of vegetation past the sell-by date of summer and a drawing in of light in the early evening.
This year, however, the yellowthroats appeared to be in fuller voice than usual. The call – a loud, staccato “tonk, tonk, tonk” – woke me in the early morning and then was heard again after the sun had set.
What was being carried in that message, an Indian summer on the way, a sense of spring at a time when the chill of winter should be in the air? A warning about global warming? Perhaps the honeyeaters knew a thing or two, because on March 1, the official start of autumn, a heatwave engulfed the state. The hottest March day on record was recorded, following the hottest summer the state had known.
Whatever the weather. at the start of each season I always do a bird walk to record what is about. In autumn I usually try to determine which summer migrants have already left these shores, and which ones might be lingering, the migrants using my local birding patch, the Waterworks Reserve, as a stopover point on their journeys north.
I watch specifically for dusky woodswallows, which I rarely see in spring but always record hunting insects in the reserve during the first weeks of March. Do they follow different migration routes to and from their wintering grounds on the mainland? It is one of the mysteries of Tasmanian bird migration, along with the erratic movements of some of our resident birds in autumn and winter, which still have to be determined.
The yellowthroats, however, never seem to stray far and I suspect the ones I hear in the gums surrounding my garden have been reared in nests there and will spend their entire lives in my neighbourhood, enchanting me with their songs from year to year.
But I still can’t explain why they were being so vocal this autumn. Perhaps it was the males from this year’s breeding season setting up territories for themselves.
The morning of March 1 brought searing heat, building to 39 degrees at noon, but I was still determined to do my bird walk, setting off before the sun had discovered its full power. The birds were about, only making sure to feed in shaded areas.
The sulphur-crested cockatoos had forsaken digging for the roots of grass on the embankments of the two reservoirs of the reserve and were instead eating the fallen seeds of blackwood and silver wattle in the shade of the trees. Likewise, masked lapwings hunted grubs under blue gums.
And without having to seek it out, a yellowthroat flew to perch in a shrub right in front of me, displaying the yellow feathers of his throat, the plumage as fresh and bright as if it was the new moult of spring.