We’ve now traced the happy narratives of two bird families — the Sacred Kingfishers and the Grey Wagtails. Now, sitting inside during another extended period of La Niña rain, I’m reminded of a less-happy story: that of the Reed Warblers.
This takes us back to the heady days of spring, when trudging down the path at Commonwood Farm became pleasurable: the trees were greening, the grass was stirring, and birds were chirping all around. In a bank of reeds that screened the end of a long, tree-hung pool, I could hear a rhythmic ‘chuck . . . chuck . . . chuck’ — but the source of the sound was hard to pinpoint and no movement could be discerned.
After a week or two, the hidden birds could be heard calling from afar — an attractive fluting song of strung-together phrases. But they would fall silent on our approach, and no matter how furtive our lurking, no bird could be seen. The ignoble temptation to lob a brick into the reeds to scare one out welled up more than once.
But then it became more obvious that the technique for spotting this particular fowl was to crouch and wait. Perhaps they have a particularly short attention span, but it usually took just a minute or two before you could see something stirring deep down in the reeds, and if you held your breath and stayed very still, a small, olive-brown bird may just appear for a second or two. And if you prayed a bit, it may just open its bill and sing.
This was the money shot: producing that jazz-inflected string of melodious calls causes the white feathers at the bird’s throat to ripple, exposing a black under-layer that pulses and winks in synch with the music. And even better, the tiny songster really stretches its beak wide, exposing a bright orange inside — a sudden splash of colour on a rather dull-looking specimen.
And then, very briefly, they were nesting: you could see them carrying bits of nesting material enthusiastically in their dipping flights along the watercourse. Soon it was possible to count perhaps five nesting pairs along the creek, with the possibility of getting a decent shot or two at each depending on time of day and the photographer’s willingness to wait.
And when they started to dart out of the reeds to hunt bugs, it was reasonable to assume there was a nest secreted away in there containing a clutch of clamouring chicks.
And then came one of those La Niña interludes: it rained miserably and continuously for days. The rivers and billabongs and such rose and rose. We didn’t venture down to Commonwood — to stray even a little way into the bush got you soaked and caked in mud, and it didn’t take Hercule Poirot to know that the creek would be in flood.
Once things had calmed down a bit, Archie and I ventured back down to Commonwood. All the signs were that the water had come up very high, breaking the banks of the creek and swamping the path. The flood had flattened the long grass in the adjacent paddocks; debris was caught high up against the trunks of trees and bushes; the odd tree trunk lay across the path. Everything smelt of mud and damp.
And the reed beds? Flattened. What had once been a world of near-verticals was all horizontal. They had been under metres of water — and the Warblers’ nests would have been overwhelmed early in the affair. There was no chuck-chucking, no jazz singing. Those four or five nests wouldn’t have had a chance.
I heard a reed warbler once or twice more in the following weeks, but couldn’t spot it. And then they must have moved on. They may be back next year, but part of me hopes they won’t: they need to find somewhere less prone to flooding. Of course nature is indifferent to all this — it follows a few simple rules, and those are changing. The birds don’t get it — they’ll continue to do what they do, and the ones with the highest nests will survive.
