The Tasmanian native-hens in my garden had been displaying the amorous side to their nature all night. Their mating ritual had started at midnight and the strangely rhythmic grunts and squawks finished at around 7am, just as the sun flooded the Waterworks Valley with light.
The antics of the native-hens are not new in my garden and each year at this time I brace myself for my sleep to be disturbed. Not that I mind. Having lived in cities for most of my life it could be hoons on high-powered motor-cycles or police car sirens.
The native-hens first arrived about 10 years ago when, by coincidence, they made headlines beyond their goings-on in my garden.
A report announcing that about 60 purely Tasmanian words had made it into the Australian National Dictionary included one for the hens, the narkie.
The blunt, hard-edged noun sort of sums up the bird – not that mainland Australians would have a name for it because the native-hen, like many of the quirks of the Tasmanian lexicon, belong solely to these islands.
Tasmanians have another name for the bird – the turbo-chook – which no doubt in time will also make its way into the dictionary.
I haven’t been able to determine why the native-hen should be called the narkie – perhaps it’s just a shortened version of its common name – but the term turbo-chook perfectly describes this flightless bird’s surprising turn of speed. The native-hen is capable of running on long legs at 50 km/h.
Native-hens are also strong swimmers, happily taking to water when threatened instead of running. When they sense danger they often flick their tail to warn others and if chased will seek the shelter of grass or reeds after the initial mad dash.
The native-hen is not only notable for being one of 12 birds exclusive to Tasmania but for its social behaviour in which females in many cases eschew mature males, instead taking a harem of young suitors.
Because birds are so obvious, always forming a backdrop to our everyday lives, it is not surprising they are often given local names.
Another endemic bird, the black currawong, is called the black jay in more rural areas outside the cities and there are also Tasmanian names for birds occurring on the mainland. The grey fantail is cranky-fan here, referring to its erratic, feathery flight in pursuit of flying insects and the grey butcherbird is known as the Derwent jackass in the south of the state.
An annual visitor from the mainland, the black-faced cuckoo-shrike becomes the summerbird after it crosses Bass Strait at the start of spring.
In my own regional dialect, that of the Londoner, “nark” in the Cockney tongue signifies either a police informer or someone being of extreme annoyance. In my book, a narkie calling in the dead of night falls into the latter category.