by Carla Caruso
You may have heard that the Aussie Bird Count is on again, from 14-20 October.
The national citizen science program is run by not-for-profit organisation BirdLife Australia. Participants are asked to spend just 20 minutes in their favourite outdoor space – from their backyard to their local park – and record what birds they see and hear, via its app or online.
With many looking to the skies this month, we thought it a good time to chat to a local birding club and find out what makes its members pursue the hobby year-round.
Image: BirdLife Australia. (Fun fact: Birds SA is the oldest birding association in Australasia, predating even BirdLife Australia by two years.)
One such club is the Adelaide Ornithologists’ Club, which meets at the Goodman Building in the Adelaide Botanic Garden (Park 11), usually on the second Wednesday of the month. (‘Ornithology’ concerns the study of birds.)
Its birdwatching outings are generally held on the Sunday following the meeting, starting at 9.30am. Once a year, the club also stages a spring excursion for a week to an area further afield.
The club was founded by surgeon Alan Lendon in 1960, as a breakaway group from the South Australian Ornithological Association (also known as Birds SA).
At the time of the split, those in the breakaway group felt threatened by a proposal that would bring greater control over aviculture (the practice of keeping and breeding birds). However, this is no longer a focus of the Adelaide Ornithologists’ Club, which is also all about viewing birds in the wild these days.
Club members pursuing their passion during an outing to the Onkaparinga River Recreation Park. Photo: Rosemary Lloyd. (Main photo also by Rosemary.)
Paul Lloyd, a former maths teacher (pictured, top), is the club’s secretary and has been a member for 15 years. “My wife, Rosemary, and I spent most of our working lives outside of Australia [in the UK and US],” he said.
“When we came back, we were primarily looking to find where people go to watch birds – that was our initial reason for joining the club. [As we found] the club is a very laidback, friendly organisation.”
Rosemary, a retired French literature professor, also helps out by editing the club’s annual report. The club currently has about 50 members.
There are many reasons why people enjoy birdwatching, according to Paul. “Most birds are colourful to look at. People also like spotting them, as a sort of ‘hunting’ instinct for seeing things that might not want to be seen or are trying to hide from you. And I think human beings are a little bit envious of something that can fly too.”
While members don’t wear camouflage during outings, they often steer away from sporting attention-grabbing, bright hues. This photo, by Rosemary Lloyd, is from a spring excursion to Melrose in the Flinders Ranges.
Locations for the club’s group outings have ranged from Aldinga Scrub to Mount Barker’s Laratinga Wetlands and Salisbury’s Greenfields Wetlands. A trip to the Victoria Park / Pakapakanthi (Park 16) is also in the works, where Paul expects to see many ducks, reed warblers, and grassbirds.
One species that is abundant elsewhere in the city, according to Paul, are parrots – including sulphur-crested cockatoos.
“There is also a big flock of long-billed corellas, which have exploded in their range, amazingly, in the last few years.
“They used to be entirely in western Victoria, but they’ve spread rapidly across South Australia and are now all over the place due to the food opportunities here.”
This long-billed corella was caught on camera by Chris Gascoigne in Peppermint Park / Wita Wirra (Park 18).
Also prevalent in the CBD? The noisy miner – a native bird that’s often confused with the Indian myna.
“The myna is very invasive on the east coast, but there aren’t many here,” Paul said. “A noisy miner [meanwhile] is a native bird, but it’s very aggressive and goes about in a fairly large flock.”
While Paul is based in Mount Barker, he said: “Some of our members in the suburbs say that the only bird they see in their yard is the noisy miner unfortunately, because it’s chased everything else off.”
This noisy miner was snapped by Fran Mussared in Adelaide Botanic Garden (Park 11).
Another aspect that Paul enjoys about birds is that some species migrate while others do not. “There are birds that are completely resident. They’re in the same patch that you are all-year-round.
“There are very short-distance migrants as well. Some birds in the Adelaide Hills, like spinebills, go down to the plains, where it’s a bit warmer, when the weather cools. Then they come back up again.
“At the other extreme, there are birds in places like Goolwa, which, after our summer, head off north to the far tips of Siberia to breed — mostly sandpipers, with interesting names like the ‘red-necked stint’ and the ‘bar-tailed godwit’.
“There are now trackers that are small enough to attach to a bird and they’ve yielded amazing results of birds flying nonstop for 5000km.”
You can see why the topic of birds is endlessly intriguing!
A few other interesting titbits on birds:
In 2011, a comedy film, The Big Year, came out, surrounding bird enthusiasts who try to win in a year-long bird-spotting competition. It starred Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson.
Paul said the concept is a real thing. “There are people who have something called a ‘big year’, where you see as many birds as you can in your own country. However, now there are also people trying to see as many birds in a year as they can around the whole world – it’s a big investment, particularly if you’re doing it worldwide.”
Sometimes the bird world can seem cruel to us humans, with some bird parents kicking their babies out of the nest early.
But Paul said there are good reasons for them doing this. “Many birds often have a year-round patch, or home range. The adult birds will actually chase the young ones away when they’re capable of feeding themselves as they’ve got to go find their own property to establish.
“It’s a way of getting the species to spread out, if conditions change. Having that sort of dispersal means they’re using all the available spots.”
For more bird-related information, check out our article series, What Bird is That?.
