A scarlet robin sat on an exposed twig, bathed in a mellow, yellow autumnal light. After a day of torrential rain, the clouds had lifted and so had my spirits.
A robin on a low perch, its head moving from side to side, his eyes trained on insects flitting in the kangaroo grass beneath him.
Not normally an uncommon sight in the great Tasmanian outdoors. All the same I had been complaining over coffee to a birding friend the previous day that there seemed to be a shortage of robins this year, viewed on my daily ramblings.
He agreed and alarm bells started to ring. Across Australia the scarlet robin, along with many other woodland species, is reported to be in serious decline because of land-clearing and the effects of both drought and bushfires.
My friend and I were seated at the Signal Station Restaurant at Mt Nelson, a location where we had seen robins before. Not a dickie bird this year and other species which had kept us entertained in the past had failed to show.
Although anecdotal observations about falling bird numbers can carry dangers without serious scientific research, I wondered why robins had also appeared to vanish from other Hobart birdwatching spots.
So robins were in my thoughts the next day when I set off for one of my favourite sites, the Queens Domain, determined to squeeze in a little birding between bouts of heavy rain.
My perseverance to beat the weather was soon rewarded. The sun broke through the clouds to the west and shed low sunlight over the main walking track, Max’s Infinity Loop.
And then another reward. Forest ravens uttering frantic calls, more a screech than a caw, alerted me to a white goshawk hunting overhead. Joining the ravens in broadcasting a warning was a grey currawong which had been bathing in a pool of water trapped between rocks during the day’s downpours.
Making the most of the sun, I made a second loop of the track and was soon halted by a flurry of birds celebrating the sun’s warmth, with hail from the morning’s storm still glistening on the sealed track.
Birds of different species often flock together, a mutual sharing of food resources with safety in numbers. At the core of this feeding frenzy was my target robin, his bright red breast appearing to attract other birds, like moths to a flame.
A grey fantail flitted around the robin, sharing the bounty of insects, and on the same sheoak a brown thornbill plucked tiny grubs from the grooves in the bark. All the while, a yellow-throated honeyeater sang from the treetops.
The day had started out under a cloud, literally, amid a fierce storm and a worry that birds were growing ever harder to find. Now I found myself in a more optimistic mood, looking to sunnier times.