Hanging out with bird nerds (and getting paid for it!)

I've got a great job. Mostly I am an office-bound creature but every now and then I get to go out into the field with my ecologist colleagues to do what they're doing in this picture. For the past 9 days I've been on a bird survey throughout the Murray and Murrumbidgee Catchment Areas from Gundagai to past Deniliquin. This map of the Murray Catchment Area shows most of the area we covered.


It's quite hard work. You have to be up and on-site as the birds are waking up and some days that means driving 100kms before dawn. Then it's a matter of finding our way to the marked (although sometimes not very well marked!) survey points in the bush and doing a five-minute stint of listening and looking for birds. All birds detected are noted down according to their species and their proximity to the survey point. This is then repeated at another point 100m away and again 200m away from the first point. These three points constitutes a site and each team does between 6 and 12 sites a day.

The aim of our surveys is to monitor over several years the abundance and variety of bird life in a range of different vegetation types, e.g. remnant woodland vegetation, blocks of planted trees, strips of planted trees, travelling stock routes. Most of our sites are on farmland so the impact of cattle or sheep grazing on the vegetation is also a variable which is taken into account. From this we are able to make recommendations to farmers and other stakeholders (e.g. government) about best practice management for wildlife in agricultural landscapes. Our team also does surveys at other times during the year for small mammals (e.g. antechinus, bush rats, bandicoots), reptiles and arboreal marsupials (e.g. possums and gliders).

My colleague Steve doing a bird survey.

My colleague Steve knows more than I could ever hope to learn about Australian animals and even though we were there to do a bird survey he just had to look under the reptile survey substrates to check for critters.
I'm a big weeny when it comes to snakes so I let Steve do the corrugated iron substrates but I was brave enough to help with the tiles and sleepers at most sites, although the first time I found a skink under a tile I did drop the tile in fright! Luckily the little Boulenger's Skink went unharmed and after that initial shock I chilled out. Still, I was happy that this little fella happened to be under one of the sleepers that Steve turned over and not one of mine. I probably would have yelled "Ahhh. Brown Snake!" and run for the hills. But it's actually a Curl Snake - see the dark brown head? It gets its name because it curls its tail from side to side when feeling threatened.


So I am now hooked on birding. I know about 50 species of bird from the Murray/Murrumbidgee area and when I got home yesterday promptly went and bought a Birds of the ACT book. Next purchase will be binoculars. And to continue the birding theme through to its natural conclusion...knitting, of course! Here is some mohair I bought in Gundagai. It was handspun and hand-dyed in Tumut. I got it from the Gundagai Arts and Crafts Emporium at the bottom of the main street in Gundagai. If you're ever passing that way, it's well worth a look. Not a lot of fibre but a lot of other crafty and antiquey goods.


The mohair looks quite different in a ball than on the hank. The dominant colour of green becomes apparent. I knitted a gorgeous baby beanie from it on the trip for my colleague and friend Rebecca but in a der-brain moment I forgot to take a photo of it before I gave it to her. Anyway, I called it a Little Lorikeet beanie because it looked like the colours of that bird.

One final photo now from the trip of a mosaic ute in Deniliquin. As you may know Deni's biggest event each year is the Deni Ute Muster. They hold the world record for the most utes in one place. Something like 4000+ utes, I think. While I have no desire to attend such an event in my lifetime, I have made an attempt at mosaics before and once tiled a bathroom so I can appreciate just how much work went it this. It's gobsmacking, isn't it?