Latest news with #BirdLifeAustralia
West Australian
16 hours ago
- General
- West Australian
Another South West shire makes an ‘Owl Friendly' move as the Shire of Dardanup ditches SGAR poisons
Another South West shire is making an 'Owl Friendly' move, ditching the use of Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides in a move to protect native animals. The Shire of Dardanup has officially dropped the use of SGAR poisons following feedback from concerned residents and in support of ongoing campaigns by BirdLife Australia. The shire is shifting to using first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides at key locations including the library, administration and community building, Eaton Recreation Centre, Eaton foreshore toilets, shire depot, Dardanup office and Dardanup Hall to continue managing any rodent infestations. Shire chief executive Andre Schonfeldt said the change reflected the shire's strong commitment to environmental stewardship and responsible pest control practices. 'We've listened to our community and acted to ensure our pest control measures align with our values,' he said. 'SGARs may be effective at killing rodents, but they're also deadly to the animals that eat those rodents — including our owls, ospreys, lizards and even beloved pets — that's simply not good enough. 'By switching to first-generation products, which biodegrade much faster and pose far less risk to native predators, we're helping keep our wildlife safe while still managing pests effectively.' Mr Schonfeldt said SGARs accumulated in the bodies of animals that consumed poisoned rodents, often resulting in secondary poisoning and death — especially in birds of prey that are critical to natural rodent control. In contrast, FGARs are considered a safer alternative, as their faster breakdown reduces the likelihood of poisoning non-target species. He said BirdLife Australia had long advocated against the use of SGARs, encouraging all levels of government to adopt safer baiting methods and help protect native bird populations. 'The Shire of Dardanup proudly stands alongside these efforts and supports the work of BirdLife Bunbury in its local conservation endeavours,' Mr Schonfeldt said. 'The transition involved coordinating multiple product changes across different service providers — an effort the shire sees as a small but important step in protecting the region's precious biodiversity. This is about doing the right thing — for our environment, our wildlife and our future. We're proud to be leading by example.' The shire's move comes just shortly after the Shire of Harvey voted unanimously to become an Owl Friendly shire along with several other local governments across the State. Birdlife Bunbury convenor Diane Cavanagh congratulated the Shire of Dardanup for the shift away from SGARs. 'It is wonderful to see the Shire of Dardanup implementing rodenticide control methods which protect local birdlife from lethal second generation rodenticides,' she said. 'Every initiative which helps stem the decline in local native birdlife helps sustain the precious biodiversity which surrounds us in WA's South West.' The Eaton Community Library recently hosted an informative session on rat baiting through its monthly free Planet Matters events. For more information, check out the Library's website at
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Shoppers 'genuinely shocked' by side effect of Coles, Bunnings, Woolworths, Mitre 10 product
For years, Coles, Woolworths, Bunnings, Mitre 10, and other major retailers have been knowingly and legally selling a poison to consumers with a deadly side effect. It's quietly killing off Australia's native animals. Now Yahoo News can reveal more than 280 vets, doctors, farmers, scientists, and conservationists have signed an open letter calling on the nation's chemical regulator to ban merchants from selling this 'highly-toxic' form of rat bait to consumers. Second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) are openly sold on the same shelves as less harmful first-generation poisons, traps and natural baits. Although there are warnings on packets, unless shoppers delve into the fine print, they're unlikely to be able to tell the difference, and experts believe only professionals should be able to use these products because they're so dangerous. The letter has been sent from BirdLife Australia to the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) as it is conducting a review of SGARs. It notes the United States, Canada, and the European Union have all introduced 'significant restrictions' to reduce the risk of 'unintended harm' caused by these products. 'Australia is lagging behind, allowing the continued use of SGARs in a way that is putting our wildlife and pets at risk,' it warns, dubbing it a 'crisis' that needs 'immediate intervention'. BirdLife Australia's Dr Holly Parsons told Yahoo News SGARs have a commercial purpose, however most consumers are 'genuinely shocked' that these baits are sold in supermarkets and hardware stores for home use when they can harm owls, native mammals, and even pets. 'There's a perception that because you can buy it on the shelf it's safe to use, and if you use it in accordance with the directions there's not going to be a problem. But that's not the case,' she said. Related: 😳 Bunnings workers struggle to spot deadly product on shelf SGARs were developed in the 1980s to combat growing resistance by rats to first-generation rodenticides. But these new poisons don't break down quickly in the environment, meaning each time a non-target animal eats a rat or mouse, they will accumulate more poison in their body. Sometimes the poisons will directly kill animals by making them slowly bleed out. But often they make non-target species so sick they get hit by cars or become unable to hunt. It's long been known that predatory birds like owls and tawny frogmouths frequently succumb to SGARs. Sadly, it's unpaid wildlife carers and volunteer vets who are left to mop up the problem when Aussies find sick and dying birds in their yards. In February, new research revealed native mammals like Tasmanian devils and quolls that are already threatened with extinction could be tipped over the edge by these chemicals. The signatories to the letter warn the problem is so serious that SGARs will soon be nominated as a Key Threatening Process under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act – Commonwealth legislation designed to safeguard endangered species. This would place SGARs alongside other major threats to the survival, abundance, or evolutionary development of native species, with other examples including feral animals, land clearing and chytrid fungus, which has directly caused the extinction of seven frog species in Australia. 'This issue is critical, and the urgency cannot be overstated. The ongoing use of SGARs presents a severe and immediate threat to Australia's wildlife and pets,' the letter says. Parsons told Yahoo the problem is continuing to 'grow deeper' the more we research it and that APVMA needed to act. 'More and more, we're understanding these products are getting out further than we ever expected them to. Many people probably don't realise that their backyard is part of the local environment, and so the impact of what they do inside their home is going to have ramifications for the wildlife around them,' she said. 📸 Beach find highlights dark side of Queensland's $88 million tourism pledge Dangerous discovery made 30cm under Western Australian garden 🌏 Alarming map highlights growing threats to $3.8 billion industry In 2023, pressure on Bunnings to stop selling animal glue traps proved effective, with the retailer confirming they would phase them out. These products had been linked to wildlife harm, and in this case Bunnings acted without being forced to by new regulations. Some campaigners had also hoped the retailer would withdraw SGARs from consumer sale without the need for the government to intervene. Yahoo visited Bunnings and Coles stores and saw SGARs on shelves beside less harmful products. And while this may be confusing for some consumers, the retailers are complying with all current legal guidelines with their displays. Active ingredients in SGARs-based products include brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, difenacoum, and flocoumafen. An update on their use by the APVMA is expected this year. Birdlife Australia's 281 signatories include biodiversity expert Professor Martine Maron, environmental scientist Professor Raylene Cooke, former Queensland chief scientist Professor Hugh Possingham, and molecular scientist Associate Professor Bill Bateman. They are calling for the following seven changes: SGARs to be withdrawn from public sale and their use restricted to licensed professionals. A ban on their use outside of buildings. Promotion of alternatives like electronic traps and non-anticoagulant options. Develop new management strategies that prioritise non-chemical alternatives. Mandate the monitoring of SGAR impacts on wildlife. Establish buffer zones around ecologically sensitive areas. Develop a threat abatement plan to address rodenticide contamination in the environment. Coles was contacted for comment, but it did not immediately respond. Metcash's Independent Hardware Group (IHG), which supplies Mitre 10 stores with products including SGARs, told Yahoo News it "will comply" with any directives legislated by the APVMA. "In the interim, we are working with suppliers to produce educational materials for members and consumers around the use of alternative products," it said in a statement. "While we cannot compel independent Mitre 10 stores to display signage, it will be strongly encouraged. We are also in the process of extending our range of natural, pallet-based throw packs that are non-toxic to birds and other wildlife." Bunnings said it had worked with the APVMA and suppliers to update packaging to "clearly display" on the front when SGARs are present, and introduced QR codes in rodent control aisles so customers can learn more about products. "The rodenticide products we sell are in line with guidance from the Federal regulator, the APVMA, and we will continue to follow its advice in this area. This includes any requirements confirmed by the APVMA when the Anticoagulant Rodenticides Chemical Review is finalised," a spokesperson said. Bunnings added that it was providing "choice" for consumers, and that included both rodenticides and non-poisonous alternatives to help customers achieve the "best solution to their specific rodent problem". Woolworths said the products are "important" for people who have issues with rats or mice, particularly in rural areas. It also sells them in metropolitan and suburban stores. "We also sell a number of alternative options including ultrasonic repellents, traps and rodenticides without second-generation anticoagulants," it said. "As always, we encourage our customers to follow the instructions outlined on these products, which include clear labels and warnings about safe use, storage and disposal." You can read the full BirdLife Australia letter here. Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
The fight for Woogaroo Forest: new housing could silence some of Queensland's ‘virtuoso songbirds'
A piercing whistle sounds from the canopy of a stand of gum trees at the edge of rows of brick houses, newly built upon streets with names such as Pardalote Drive, Rufous Crescent and Thornbill Court. 'King parrot,' Hugh Possingham says – referring to the call, not a court or a crescent. The mathematical ecologist is a professor at the University of Queensland and a leading figure in Australian conservation biology. The state's chief scientist from 2020 to 2022, Possingham is also an avid birder and vice-president of BirdLife Australia. On this day in late February he is joined by, Christina Zdenek, an ecologist and herpetologist with the Australian Reptile Academy, for a short hike through a couple of hundred hectares of eucalyptus woodland between Brisbane and Ipswich. Their destination is a Eucalyptus fibrosa, or ironbark, possibly 100 years or older, that the two eminent scientists call 'the poo tree'. More bird calls are identified. That big warble is from a weebill, which – weighing only slightly more than a teaspoon of sugar – is Australia's smallest bird. 'Most of the birdwatching I do is actually bird listening,' Possingham says. So what does the professor hear as he enters this stand of trees? At its edges, where forest meets ever-encroaching housing, Possingham hears the brash and beautiful warbles of aggressive birds that dominate Brisbane's suburbs: butcher birds, magpies, currawongs and the laser gun 'pwee pwee pwee' of the noisy minor. But as he enters the sanctuary of the forest, he says, the calls change. In the Woogaroo, Possingham might hear a harmony – or a cacophony – of more than 10 species of honeyeaters. Those birdsongs could be the rich melodies of golden and rufous whistlers (birds described by enthusiasts as virtuoso songbirds) or the delicate chirp of the varied sittella. They are bird calls Possingham says are now increasingly rare in south-east Queensland; calls he fears could soon become rarer still. A lot has changed in the past 28 years – but the area known under the Ipswich city planning scheme as Lot 9999 has not. On 23 January 1997, the internet was a novelty households accessed via the crunchy sounds of a dial-up modem and telephones were attached to landlines with cords. Koalas weren't endangered and the land around Lot 9999, between Queensland's capital Brisbane and the old coal mining city of Ipswich, was thickly wooded. On that day in 1997, the Springfield development control plan was gazetted, setting in motion the transformation of 2,860 hectares (7,064 acres) of forestry land into the Ipswich suburbs encompassed by Greater Springfield. Reputedly the first privately built city in Australia, it aims to house a population as large as Darwin's by the end of the decade. The man behind Greater Springfield was Maha Sinnathamby, a property developer, and it would elevate him to billionaire 'founder and visionary' status. With his business partner, Bob Sharpless, he would enter the Queensland business leaders' hall of fame. Almost three decades later, only about 420ha of the land on which Sinnathamby built his city remains 'unrefined'. And at its heart is the nearly 160ha of Lot 9999. But a coalition of scientists and residents want to block plans to sculpt and flatten this land to make way for about 1,800 houses. These campaigners gave Lot 9999 and the bush that remains around it a new name, one derived from a creek that runs through it: Woogaroo Forest. The Woogaroo is privately owned – not that you would know, standing at its edges, listening out for birds. Joggers pound the tracks bulldozed through the trees that form deep scars or erosion through the forest. A popular outdoors website ranks it among the best near Ipswich, describing it as 'a popular trail for hiking, mountain biking and running' though one in which visitors 'can still enjoy some solitude during quieter times of day'. Occasionally, 4WDs or dirt bikes whiz through. Near one entrance, mounds of rubbish have been dumped – and someone has cut down several large, old trees. Zdenek talks about the 'excellent' birds she sees in the Woogaroo too, including cicadabirds and mistletoe birds. Her herpetologist's eye, though, is trained to spot reptiles such as legless and frill-necked lizards. Woogaroo, she says, is home to one of south-east Queensland's last populations of the famous frill-neck. But an ecologist sees a forest in networks. So as well as her pet interests, Zdenek talks about the brush-tailed phascogale, a small, predatory arboreal hunter that calls Woogaroo home, along with marsupial gliders, powerful owls, tusked frogs and grey-headed flying foxes. The two scientists speak admiringly of plants, too; of pockets of dense vine scrub, a habitat type of which only 2.4% remains in the Ipswich area, where it is classified as endangered. And, of course, there are the trees. They say the centuries-old ironbarks still dot Woogaroo, trees with wood too hard to cut or trunks too knobbly or misshapen to fashion into planks. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion Finally, they talk of the 'poo tree'. Last year, Zdenek spent six months with a UQ research lab to 'conduct novel gut microbiome analyses' of koalas to help 'deliver cost-effective wildlife monitoring services'. 'My job was to collect koala poo,' she says, holding a blob of scat she has collected from the base of that tree inside the Woogaroo. 'If it is koala poo, and it is fresh, you just smell eucalyptus. If it's possum poo, it just smells like shit.' Zdenek crushes it and holds the scat to her nose; several months old now, it has lost its scent. But there are other giveaways. Possum poo has seeds in it, she says. Koala poo, on the other hand, is made up of only digested leaves – it is plumper, and has a greenish tinge. 'This is definitely koala poo.' In May, an Ipswich city council assessment officer approved an application to reconfigure an area of Lot 9999 into as many as 982 residential lots, which developers have named Springview Village 3. The land is marked as core koala habitat under the Queensland government's koala habitat mapping and recent surveys and footage have shown koalas in the Woogaroo Forest. But development in Lot 9999 won't need state approval because it has been exempted from koala habitat protection codes under the Springfield development control plan of 1997. The mayor of Ipswich, Teresa Harding, has said she has and will continue to meet members of the Save the Woogaroo Forest group and that she understands their concerns. However, she says 'unfortunately', the Woogaroo is 'not a preserved forest'. 'It is instead a privately owned parcel of land designated for residential development by the Queensland government close to 30 years ago,' the mayor says. The landholder, Cherish Enterprises, referred questions to developer Stockland, which has signed a multimillion dollar deal for pre-emptive rights to buy and develop land in the Woogaroo. A Stockland spokesperson says the land is privately owned and zoned for residential use. 'The region's need for more homes was well documented,' the spokesperson says. 'Stockland has a long and proud history helping more Australians achieve the dream of home ownership and we are committed to continue working with government and the community to provide housing options to first home buyers and families in south-east Queensland.' The development of Lot 9999 will eventually have to pass across the desk of the federal environment minister because of its effect on threatened species, as will three other proposed developments in the Woogaroo. All four referrals under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act languished for several years as the department waits for the developers to lodge more documents. It is here that campaigners are staking their hopes for the forest's future. Prior to the federal election, the office of the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, referred questions about Woogaroo to the environment department. A department spokesperson says 'any future decision whether or not to approve developments in the area referred to as Woogaroo Forest, under national environmental law, will consider the impacts of those developments on matters of national environmental significance and will take into account the context of the proposed developments'. As Possingham reflects on the need to house south-east Queensland's booming population, he turns to the language of maths. Over the next 20 years, he says, 2 million people will move to the region. By his calculations, half of them will move into areas of urban infill; the other half, to urban sprawl. Possingham calculates 30,000ha of greenfield land would be needed to build the houses for those 1 million people. 'There is plenty of completely degraded land with no biodiversity values at all to put those houses on,' he says. 'There's degraded agricultural land, there's abandoned land, there's abandoned mines … south-east Queensland is 6m hectares. 'If you can't find 30,000ha in 6m hectares, then you are not looking very hard.'
The Advertiser
15-05-2025
- General
- The Advertiser
Superb Fairy-wren: why it's our favourite of Australia's 'feathered jewels'
Of the birds that bring wild beauty into our urban spaces, none is more exquisite and captivating than the Superb Fairy-wren, writes birdwatcher RUSSELL McGREGOR, the author of Enchantment by Birds. Superb Fairy-wrens abounded in the garden of the apartment in inner-suburban Canberra where I lived while researching my book, Enchantment by Birds. Iridescent-blue and purple-black males bounced across the lawn and scuttled into the shrubbery alongside their fawn-feathered female and juvenile companions. Superb Fairy-wrens are common in other cities too, including Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, as well as in the farmlands and bushlands between those south-eastern capitals. In and around Perth, their place is taken by the even more dazzling Splendid Fairy-wren, the males sporting an electric violet-blue plumage that shimmers in the sunlight. In northern cities such as Darwin and Townsville, the common fairy-wren is the Red-backed species, coloured jet-black overall with a vivid scarlet saddle. There are six other species of fairy-wren scattered across Australia, ensuring that almost every town and city on the continent either hosts these gorgeous jewels of birdlife or at least has them living nearby. Fairy-wrens are some of the most exquisite birds that can easily be found close to home, but they certainly aren't the only ones. Urban and suburban areas abound with birdlife. Where I live on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, we're visited daily by Pale-headed Rosellas, Rainbow Lorikeets, Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos, Grey Butcherbirds, Lewin's Honeyeaters, Crested Pigeons, and many more. Occasionally, Rose-crowned Fruit-Doves and Regent Bowerbirds drop by; and there are several species, including Noisy Pitta and Russet-tailed Thrush, that we can hear in nearby bushland but never see. In eight years' residence here, I've recorded 94 species from my backyard. There's a local fairy-wren, too. Here, it's the Variegated Fairy-wren, rather like the Superb, but with bright chestnut shoulder patches. With such a profusion of birdlife, it's unsurprising that lots of birding is done within urban bounds. In 1998, Birds Australia began a Birds in Backyards project to coordinate urban observations into a major research, education, and conservation program. Since 2014, the same organisation, renamed BirdLife Australia, has conducted an annual Aussie Backyard Bird Count. It recently shed the second word, but most observations are still done in backyards. Drawing tens of thousands of eager participants, according to BirdLife it's 'one of Australia's biggest citizen science events!' Its name is new, as is the electronic wizardry that gets data from suburban gardens into scientific datasets. But birding in backyards, like citizen science itself, is far from novel. One hundred years ago, Harry Wolstenholme, son of the suffragette Maybanke Anderson, was an avid birdwatcher who did most of his watching in his garden in the northern Sydney suburb of Wahroonga. Sometimes, he backyard-birded alone; sometimes in company with birding legends of the day such as Keith Hindwood, Alec Chisholm, and Norman Chaffer. They not only admired Wahroonga's birdlife; they meticulously recorded it and published their observations in the Emu. A glance through early issues of that journal reveals numerous articles on urban birds. One, by Wolstenholme in 1922, was a bird list for his suburb, with annotations combining affectionate appreciations with astute observations on each species. Superb Fairy-wrens (which he called Blue Wren-Warblers) he found especially charming, delighting in the 'bright warblings of these lovely little birds' that could 'be heard in every garden as they hop and flit about among the small plants and creepers'. Wolstenholme's own garden was an avian haven, arranged to encourage the birds to interact with him. To promote that process, he fed them, and, like others at the time, he had no compunctions about acknowledging the fact. Writing in the Emu in 1929, he explained how he fostered friendship with Superb Fairy-wrens: 'These little fellows, like many of the garden birds, are very fond of cheese. While writing these notes on the verandah I have had to stop now and then to throw morsels to a pair of birds that came close below me in expectation of getting some.' Wolstenholme not only fed his avian friends; he encouraged them to perch on his fingers as they did so. Quite a few obliged. His 1929 Emu article included a photograph of a Grey Shrike-thrush eating from his hand. He even fed a Lewin's Honeyeater by holding sugared water in his cupped palm while the bird perched on his fingers to lap up the sweet liquid. This was hands-on birding. Recounting Wolstenholme's suburban birding exploits in his 1932 book Nature Fantasy in Australia, Alec Chisholm lauded such interactions unreservedly. Like Wolstenholme, Chisholm considered it wonderful that birds and people had built relationships of love and trust. He considered it wonderful, too, that such connections with wild birds could so readily be made in suburbia. Despite its title, Nature Fantasy in Australia covered only a small portion of the continent: the area within a 50-mile radius of Sydney's GPO. In it, Chisholm wrote rapturously about the birds, animals and plants that dwelt there, and meditated on how the natural environment still shaped human life in and around Australia's biggest city. Setting the tone, the book's frontispiece is a painting by Neville Cayley captioned 'The Spirit of Sydney: Scarlet Honeyeater at nest in suburban garden.' The fact that this exquisite little bird was common in Sydney's gardens exemplifies Chisholm's theme of urban Australians' ready access to the wonders of nature. That theme pervades all his writings, not just Nature Fantasy. One of Australia's most accomplished birders of the mid-20th century, Chisholm did most of his birding in and near the towns and cities of south-eastern Australia. He never visited the remote outback. Through his writings, he tried to persuade his compatriots to cherish the everyday birds, animals, and plants around them. While sometimes he turned to more distant topics, he mostly celebrated the familiar nature that his fellow Australians could experience inside and just beyond their back fences. Chisholm was not alone in this. Many of his birding friends and contemporaries - including such notables as Keith Hindwood and Arnold McGill in Sydney, and Charles Bryant and Roy Wheeler in Melbourne - also wrote prolifically about the birds of urban and near-urban places, and, like him, did much of their birdwatching there. Partly, this was due to practicalities. Especially in the early decades of the 20th century, the difficulties of travel restricted birders' options, and put visiting remote places beyond the reach of many. Yet even as the outback opened up, as cars and roads improved, four-wheel-drive vehicles became available, and air travel became cheaper, birders continued to do much of their birding no more than an hour or two from home. The growing accessibility of elsewhere opened new options, but the familiar places near home - the 'local patch', to use the insiders' idiom - retained birdwatchers' loyalties. From its inception in 1952 through to its demise over half a century later, the Bird Observers' Club's monthly magazine, the Bird Observer, devoted between a half and a third of each issue to birding in and near urban locations. Even as the magazine reported on birding excursions to ever more esoteric places in Australia and ever more exotic locales overseas, it continued to keep readers informed about the everyday birds its members encountered in their everyday lives. Many Bird Observer articles reported observations from birders' backyards. Gay Grogan began one on birding in suburban Croydon in the June 1985 issue by exclaiming how 'absolutely delighted' she was 'to see the annual visit of the Fairy Wren to my backyard', then listed dozens of species she had seen there. Entranced by 'their graceful aerial ballet' and entertaining antics, she intimated that the 'gamut of emotions' stirred by the birds in her backyard made her life richer and more fulfilling. Barbara Burns of Templestowe contributed a piece on 'Birds on a busy schedule', fondly describing the many birds she encountered during her daily routines of housekeeping, taking the kids to school, and heading off to work. By putting her in touch with the wild, birds offered respite from mundane matters, even though the wild with which she connected was just off a suburban street. In the 1990s, Molly Brown regularly contributed articles to the Bird Observer on the birds she saw around her home in Manjimup, Western Australia. In typical birdwatcher fashion, she combined expressions of affection for the birds with acute observations about their behaviour. An article on 'Our resident swallows' inquired into those birds' breeding and migratory habits, while another on a 'Roadside walk' discussed birds' adaptations to roads and roadside vegetation corridors. In 'Watching at the window', she delighted in the birds she saw through the casement windows of her living room, without venturing outside. 'A variety of birds come', she wrote, 'but star billing is given to the Splendid Fairy-wren and the Red-winged Fairy-wren. A full plumage male fairy-wren must be high on the list of the world's most beautiful birds, and ... fairy-wrens have endearing characters, too.' Urban birding extends far beyond admiring fairy-wrens from the comfort of the lounge-room. It can uncover some out-of-the-way birds in some not-so-pretty places. Arnold McGill, reminiscing in 1980 on half a century of birding in Sydney, recalled with fondness the Malabar headland 'where the sewer outfall attracted a great number of sea-birds', making it 'as good as any place in the world to watch sea-birds, outside the Antarctic'. He had seen as many as 548 Wandering Albatrosses there in a single day, as well as Black-browed and White-capped Albatrosses, Giant Petrels, and several species of shearwater and prion. Alas, 'the so-called march of progress' put an end to that superb site for seabird-watching in suburban Sydney. Melbourne birders were, and still are, able to get more up-close and personal with sewage-loving birds. Werribee Sewage Farm, now blandly - and therefore inaptly - renamed the Western Treatment Plant, lies just off the freeway between Melbourne and Geelong. So prolific is its birdlife that Werribee has been declared a Ramsar site, and attracts birders not only from Melbourne, but from all over Australia and beyond. Twitcher Sue Taylor maintains that 'it is impossible to have a bad day birding at Werribee'. Waders and waterbirds are the most abundant attractions, but Werribee also hosts numerous other species, including the critically endangered Orange-bellied Parrot and the closely related Blue-winged Parrot. A sewage farm may not meet everyone's ideal as a place to commune with nature, but it provides crucial habitat for rare and threatened species, including some that come halfway around the world to banquet on its abundance. Smaller though similarly smelly urban locales have long attracted birders as well as birds. In 1947, Charles Bryant published a tribute to the birds of Fishermen's Bend near Port Melbourne. Subtitling his article 'Beauty in a Municipal Garbage Tip', Bryant revelled in both the diversity and the tenacity of the birds to be found there. 'Undeterred by the mephitic aroma of the burning tip, the birds go about their lawful occasions', he observed; and they were just as beautiful and just as fascinating as birds in less easily accessible - if also less malodorous - places. This, and the numerous other instances of birders delighting in rubbish dumps, sewage farms, and the like, testifies to the transformative magic of birds, enabling us to penetrate beyond the superficial unsightliness - and smelliness - of such places and there behold the mysteries of nature. The romance of birds may be transformative, but some birders took the romance of the sewage plant literally. Graham Pizzey, recounting the lead-up to his marriage to Sue Taylor in 1957, remarked that, 'Quite often ... we did our courting at the Werribee sewerage farm.' It's clear from his recollections that the choice of place was his, not Sue's. Still, as Pizzey went on to explain, his romance in a sewage farm led into a long and happy marriage, and there's something delightfully apt about one of Australia's greatest field guide authors fluffing his courtship feathers at a place whose richness in birdlife resulted from some of humanity's baser functions. Sewage farms are the haunt of dedicated birders, but less smelly suburban sites offer equally engrossing birds. Legendary twitcher Sean Dooley began his zany birdwatching guidebook, Anoraks to Zitting Cisticolas, by describing an encounter with a flock of Musk Lorikeets in a busy carpark in the bayside Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Although he loved seeing rare birds in far-flung places, Dooley admitted 'the truth is that these car park lorikeets a mere five minutes from my home offer the quintessential birding experience'. It's not just that the lorikeets are pretty, although that helps. More importantly, they juxtapose the wild and the human in ways that illuminate our continuing connectedness with nature. The birds impress themselves upon our senses; they confront us with their raucously colourful reality; they tell us, visually and vocally, that even here, in a superficially soulless suburban carpark, nature not only survives, but thrives. As Dooley attests, birding at a local patch remains popular even among twitchers. Convenience, undoubtedly, is a factor, but there's more to it than that. It's also because birders - including twitchers - treasure the birds near home. Birding near home may seldom secure new ticks for seasoned birdwatchers. Yet while most birders enjoy adding new ticks to their lists, very few are interested in nothing but ticking. For most birders, today as in the past, a core component of birding is encountering the wild; and the wild near home can be as fascinating, as puzzling, as beautiful, and as awesome as the wild further afield. Moreover, engaging with the wild near home has an appeal of its own, since it attunes us to the rhythms and syncopations of nature that throb through even the urban environs where most of us live. Hearing the first Koel in September, or the Pied Butcherbird singing every day of the year; watching Superb Fairy-wrens transmute from drab to debonaire as breeding beckons, or Galahs clowning in unvarying costumes of pink and grey; being alert to the flitting, fleeting influx of Scarlet Honeyeaters when the right trees blossom, or the eternal, exasperating presence of Noisy Miners: these and hundreds of other common avian activities have captivated birdwatchers since the pastime's inception, and drawn them into an intimate awareness of how nature changes, remains constant and alternates between the two. They're among the innumerable interactions with birds we can experience close to home, inducting us into a world beyond humanity, but not beyond our capacity for empathetic connection. Alertness to birdlife enhances our appreciation of home by making us aware of its proximity to the wild. In some ways, the intimacy with nature that birders seek is easier to find when engaging with the familiar birds around home than with unfamiliar species in far-flung places. Birding close to home may not be a wilderness experience, but it's a way of touching the wild, with all the wonderment that can arouse. A Superb Fairy-wren in the backyard is as wondrous as a Purple-crowned Fairy-wren in a pandanus thicket beside a river in the Kimberleys, even if they're wondrous in somewhat different ways. The Superb Fairy-wren in the backyard is an emissary of the wild. So is its Purple-crowned cousin beside that river in the Kimberleys, but it lives in a place we automatically recognise as wild, whereas the Superb dwells in the midst of human artifice. Its presence there reminds us of the resilience of the wild, its persistence even in environments humans have radically transformed. The resilience of the wild is not boundless, and if we're prepared to listen, the fairy-wren and its backyard bird companions might tell us of the need to protect their homes by preserving the remnants of nature around our own. Backyard birds are living proof that wild creatures can thrive in the interstices between the humanised and the natural worlds. But none can survive the obliteration of the wild. Backyard birds are, mostly, common species; and commonness can dim appreciation, as I've earlier noted in relation to the beauty of Galahs. Yet the other side of commonness is familiarity, which can boost our appreciation of birds, fostering closer and more amiable relations. That's what Neville Cayley was intimating when he nominated the Superb Fairy-wren as Australia's 'favourite' among 'this family of feathered jewels': Perhaps this is because he is abundant in the more populous parts and therefore is more closely associated with our home life. He is quite common in gardens, both public and private, right in the heart of our cities and towns.... No matter where you meet him, you will always find him a charming, trustful little bird, ever ready, with a little encouragement, to make friends. There's more than a touch of anthropomorphism in Cayley's words, but that enhances, rather than diminishes, the point he's making. As classical scholar and birder Jeremy Mynott argues, 'some degree of anthropomorphism is probably both unavoidable and positively desirable' when we bring birds into our orbit of understanding and empathy. That's especially the case for the birds who live daily among us. Through birders' writings on backyard birds, stretching back more than a century, flows a message that, beneath the superficial ordinariness of suburbia, extraordinary things can be found if only we take the trouble to look. The same message is evident in bird art. Peter Trusler's paintings in the 1980 coffee-table book Birds of Australian Gardens are exemplary, conveying the beauty of suburban birds with stunning realism. Many are depicted alongside artificial props: the Willie Wagtail perches on a garden tap; the Red Wattlebird, on a plastic feeder; the Laughing Kookaburra, on a timber table with a lump of minced meat beside it; and a pair of Superb Fairy-wrens disport among exotic creepers in a rock garden. Making the message explicit, Trusler tells us in an 'Artist's Note' that he 'tried to capture something of the "living magic" that the authors and I find as we watch birds go about their daily activities. It can be just as equally appreciated in the man-made tapestry of the urban environs as in the natural splendour of the wilds'. As Trusler's words attest, there's a dichotomy built into our language that divides the urban from the wild. Yet one of the wonderful things about birding - and this is a point Trusler was getting at - is its revelation that birds bridge that divide. Birds live wild in urban spaces. They are, usually, the most visible, most beautiful, and most captivating wild creatures that we encounter around our homes. A compelling motive behind birdwatching is to touch the wild, and the fact that we can fulfil that primal desire in places near home adds to the pastime's appeal. Of course, birders also venture further afield; and as the capacity to do so has expanded, via cars, planes, and all the wonders of modernity, so birders' horizons have widened. But birders still take joy in fairy-wrens bouncing brightly around the backyard, magpies carolling from the clothesline, and sunbirds nesting on the back verandah. These are simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary: vignettes of an avian world so close we can touch it, so similar we can embrace it, yet so different from the business of humans that we can never fully comprehend it. Of the birds that bring wild beauty into our urban spaces, none is more exquisite and captivating than the Superb Fairy-wren, writes birdwatcher RUSSELL McGREGOR, the author of Enchantment by Birds. Superb Fairy-wrens abounded in the garden of the apartment in inner-suburban Canberra where I lived while researching my book, Enchantment by Birds. Iridescent-blue and purple-black males bounced across the lawn and scuttled into the shrubbery alongside their fawn-feathered female and juvenile companions. Superb Fairy-wrens are common in other cities too, including Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, as well as in the farmlands and bushlands between those south-eastern capitals. In and around Perth, their place is taken by the even more dazzling Splendid Fairy-wren, the males sporting an electric violet-blue plumage that shimmers in the sunlight. In northern cities such as Darwin and Townsville, the common fairy-wren is the Red-backed species, coloured jet-black overall with a vivid scarlet saddle. There are six other species of fairy-wren scattered across Australia, ensuring that almost every town and city on the continent either hosts these gorgeous jewels of birdlife or at least has them living nearby. Fairy-wrens are some of the most exquisite birds that can easily be found close to home, but they certainly aren't the only ones. Urban and suburban areas abound with birdlife. Where I live on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, we're visited daily by Pale-headed Rosellas, Rainbow Lorikeets, Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos, Grey Butcherbirds, Lewin's Honeyeaters, Crested Pigeons, and many more. Occasionally, Rose-crowned Fruit-Doves and Regent Bowerbirds drop by; and there are several species, including Noisy Pitta and Russet-tailed Thrush, that we can hear in nearby bushland but never see. In eight years' residence here, I've recorded 94 species from my backyard. There's a local fairy-wren, too. Here, it's the Variegated Fairy-wren, rather like the Superb, but with bright chestnut shoulder patches. With such a profusion of birdlife, it's unsurprising that lots of birding is done within urban bounds. In 1998, Birds Australia began a Birds in Backyards project to coordinate urban observations into a major research, education, and conservation program. Since 2014, the same organisation, renamed BirdLife Australia, has conducted an annual Aussie Backyard Bird Count. It recently shed the second word, but most observations are still done in backyards. Drawing tens of thousands of eager participants, according to BirdLife it's 'one of Australia's biggest citizen science events!' Its name is new, as is the electronic wizardry that gets data from suburban gardens into scientific datasets. But birding in backyards, like citizen science itself, is far from novel. One hundred years ago, Harry Wolstenholme, son of the suffragette Maybanke Anderson, was an avid birdwatcher who did most of his watching in his garden in the northern Sydney suburb of Wahroonga. Sometimes, he backyard-birded alone; sometimes in company with birding legends of the day such as Keith Hindwood, Alec Chisholm, and Norman Chaffer. They not only admired Wahroonga's birdlife; they meticulously recorded it and published their observations in the Emu. A glance through early issues of that journal reveals numerous articles on urban birds. One, by Wolstenholme in 1922, was a bird list for his suburb, with annotations combining affectionate appreciations with astute observations on each species. Superb Fairy-wrens (which he called Blue Wren-Warblers) he found especially charming, delighting in the 'bright warblings of these lovely little birds' that could 'be heard in every garden as they hop and flit about among the small plants and creepers'. Wolstenholme's own garden was an avian haven, arranged to encourage the birds to interact with him. To promote that process, he fed them, and, like others at the time, he had no compunctions about acknowledging the fact. Writing in the Emu in 1929, he explained how he fostered friendship with Superb Fairy-wrens: 'These little fellows, like many of the garden birds, are very fond of cheese. While writing these notes on the verandah I have had to stop now and then to throw morsels to a pair of birds that came close below me in expectation of getting some.' Wolstenholme not only fed his avian friends; he encouraged them to perch on his fingers as they did so. Quite a few obliged. His 1929 Emu article included a photograph of a Grey Shrike-thrush eating from his hand. He even fed a Lewin's Honeyeater by holding sugared water in his cupped palm while the bird perched on his fingers to lap up the sweet liquid. This was hands-on birding. Recounting Wolstenholme's suburban birding exploits in his 1932 book Nature Fantasy in Australia, Alec Chisholm lauded such interactions unreservedly. Like Wolstenholme, Chisholm considered it wonderful that birds and people had built relationships of love and trust. He considered it wonderful, too, that such connections with wild birds could so readily be made in suburbia. Despite its title, Nature Fantasy in Australia covered only a small portion of the continent: the area within a 50-mile radius of Sydney's GPO. In it, Chisholm wrote rapturously about the birds, animals and plants that dwelt there, and meditated on how the natural environment still shaped human life in and around Australia's biggest city. Setting the tone, the book's frontispiece is a painting by Neville Cayley captioned 'The Spirit of Sydney: Scarlet Honeyeater at nest in suburban garden.' The fact that this exquisite little bird was common in Sydney's gardens exemplifies Chisholm's theme of urban Australians' ready access to the wonders of nature. That theme pervades all his writings, not just Nature Fantasy. One of Australia's most accomplished birders of the mid-20th century, Chisholm did most of his birding in and near the towns and cities of south-eastern Australia. He never visited the remote outback. Through his writings, he tried to persuade his compatriots to cherish the everyday birds, animals, and plants around them. While sometimes he turned to more distant topics, he mostly celebrated the familiar nature that his fellow Australians could experience inside and just beyond their back fences. Chisholm was not alone in this. Many of his birding friends and contemporaries - including such notables as Keith Hindwood and Arnold McGill in Sydney, and Charles Bryant and Roy Wheeler in Melbourne - also wrote prolifically about the birds of urban and near-urban places, and, like him, did much of their birdwatching there. Partly, this was due to practicalities. Especially in the early decades of the 20th century, the difficulties of travel restricted birders' options, and put visiting remote places beyond the reach of many. Yet even as the outback opened up, as cars and roads improved, four-wheel-drive vehicles became available, and air travel became cheaper, birders continued to do much of their birding no more than an hour or two from home. The growing accessibility of elsewhere opened new options, but the familiar places near home - the 'local patch', to use the insiders' idiom - retained birdwatchers' loyalties. From its inception in 1952 through to its demise over half a century later, the Bird Observers' Club's monthly magazine, the Bird Observer, devoted between a half and a third of each issue to birding in and near urban locations. Even as the magazine reported on birding excursions to ever more esoteric places in Australia and ever more exotic locales overseas, it continued to keep readers informed about the everyday birds its members encountered in their everyday lives. Many Bird Observer articles reported observations from birders' backyards. Gay Grogan began one on birding in suburban Croydon in the June 1985 issue by exclaiming how 'absolutely delighted' she was 'to see the annual visit of the Fairy Wren to my backyard', then listed dozens of species she had seen there. Entranced by 'their graceful aerial ballet' and entertaining antics, she intimated that the 'gamut of emotions' stirred by the birds in her backyard made her life richer and more fulfilling. Barbara Burns of Templestowe contributed a piece on 'Birds on a busy schedule', fondly describing the many birds she encountered during her daily routines of housekeeping, taking the kids to school, and heading off to work. By putting her in touch with the wild, birds offered respite from mundane matters, even though the wild with which she connected was just off a suburban street. In the 1990s, Molly Brown regularly contributed articles to the Bird Observer on the birds she saw around her home in Manjimup, Western Australia. In typical birdwatcher fashion, she combined expressions of affection for the birds with acute observations about their behaviour. An article on 'Our resident swallows' inquired into those birds' breeding and migratory habits, while another on a 'Roadside walk' discussed birds' adaptations to roads and roadside vegetation corridors. In 'Watching at the window', she delighted in the birds she saw through the casement windows of her living room, without venturing outside. 'A variety of birds come', she wrote, 'but star billing is given to the Splendid Fairy-wren and the Red-winged Fairy-wren. A full plumage male fairy-wren must be high on the list of the world's most beautiful birds, and ... fairy-wrens have endearing characters, too.' Urban birding extends far beyond admiring fairy-wrens from the comfort of the lounge-room. It can uncover some out-of-the-way birds in some not-so-pretty places. Arnold McGill, reminiscing in 1980 on half a century of birding in Sydney, recalled with fondness the Malabar headland 'where the sewer outfall attracted a great number of sea-birds', making it 'as good as any place in the world to watch sea-birds, outside the Antarctic'. He had seen as many as 548 Wandering Albatrosses there in a single day, as well as Black-browed and White-capped Albatrosses, Giant Petrels, and several species of shearwater and prion. Alas, 'the so-called march of progress' put an end to that superb site for seabird-watching in suburban Sydney. Melbourne birders were, and still are, able to get more up-close and personal with sewage-loving birds. Werribee Sewage Farm, now blandly - and therefore inaptly - renamed the Western Treatment Plant, lies just off the freeway between Melbourne and Geelong. So prolific is its birdlife that Werribee has been declared a Ramsar site, and attracts birders not only from Melbourne, but from all over Australia and beyond. Twitcher Sue Taylor maintains that 'it is impossible to have a bad day birding at Werribee'. Waders and waterbirds are the most abundant attractions, but Werribee also hosts numerous other species, including the critically endangered Orange-bellied Parrot and the closely related Blue-winged Parrot. A sewage farm may not meet everyone's ideal as a place to commune with nature, but it provides crucial habitat for rare and threatened species, including some that come halfway around the world to banquet on its abundance. Smaller though similarly smelly urban locales have long attracted birders as well as birds. In 1947, Charles Bryant published a tribute to the birds of Fishermen's Bend near Port Melbourne. Subtitling his article 'Beauty in a Municipal Garbage Tip', Bryant revelled in both the diversity and the tenacity of the birds to be found there. 'Undeterred by the mephitic aroma of the burning tip, the birds go about their lawful occasions', he observed; and they were just as beautiful and just as fascinating as birds in less easily accessible - if also less malodorous - places. This, and the numerous other instances of birders delighting in rubbish dumps, sewage farms, and the like, testifies to the transformative magic of birds, enabling us to penetrate beyond the superficial unsightliness - and smelliness - of such places and there behold the mysteries of nature. The romance of birds may be transformative, but some birders took the romance of the sewage plant literally. Graham Pizzey, recounting the lead-up to his marriage to Sue Taylor in 1957, remarked that, 'Quite often ... we did our courting at the Werribee sewerage farm.' It's clear from his recollections that the choice of place was his, not Sue's. Still, as Pizzey went on to explain, his romance in a sewage farm led into a long and happy marriage, and there's something delightfully apt about one of Australia's greatest field guide authors fluffing his courtship feathers at a place whose richness in birdlife resulted from some of humanity's baser functions. Sewage farms are the haunt of dedicated birders, but less smelly suburban sites offer equally engrossing birds. Legendary twitcher Sean Dooley began his zany birdwatching guidebook, Anoraks to Zitting Cisticolas, by describing an encounter with a flock of Musk Lorikeets in a busy carpark in the bayside Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Although he loved seeing rare birds in far-flung places, Dooley admitted 'the truth is that these car park lorikeets a mere five minutes from my home offer the quintessential birding experience'. It's not just that the lorikeets are pretty, although that helps. More importantly, they juxtapose the wild and the human in ways that illuminate our continuing connectedness with nature. The birds impress themselves upon our senses; they confront us with their raucously colourful reality; they tell us, visually and vocally, that even here, in a superficially soulless suburban carpark, nature not only survives, but thrives. As Dooley attests, birding at a local patch remains popular even among twitchers. Convenience, undoubtedly, is a factor, but there's more to it than that. It's also because birders - including twitchers - treasure the birds near home. Birding near home may seldom secure new ticks for seasoned birdwatchers. Yet while most birders enjoy adding new ticks to their lists, very few are interested in nothing but ticking. For most birders, today as in the past, a core component of birding is encountering the wild; and the wild near home can be as fascinating, as puzzling, as beautiful, and as awesome as the wild further afield. Moreover, engaging with the wild near home has an appeal of its own, since it attunes us to the rhythms and syncopations of nature that throb through even the urban environs where most of us live. Hearing the first Koel in September, or the Pied Butcherbird singing every day of the year; watching Superb Fairy-wrens transmute from drab to debonaire as breeding beckons, or Galahs clowning in unvarying costumes of pink and grey; being alert to the flitting, fleeting influx of Scarlet Honeyeaters when the right trees blossom, or the eternal, exasperating presence of Noisy Miners: these and hundreds of other common avian activities have captivated birdwatchers since the pastime's inception, and drawn them into an intimate awareness of how nature changes, remains constant and alternates between the two. They're among the innumerable interactions with birds we can experience close to home, inducting us into a world beyond humanity, but not beyond our capacity for empathetic connection. Alertness to birdlife enhances our appreciation of home by making us aware of its proximity to the wild. In some ways, the intimacy with nature that birders seek is easier to find when engaging with the familiar birds around home than with unfamiliar species in far-flung places. Birding close to home may not be a wilderness experience, but it's a way of touching the wild, with all the wonderment that can arouse. A Superb Fairy-wren in the backyard is as wondrous as a Purple-crowned Fairy-wren in a pandanus thicket beside a river in the Kimberleys, even if they're wondrous in somewhat different ways. The Superb Fairy-wren in the backyard is an emissary of the wild. So is its Purple-crowned cousin beside that river in the Kimberleys, but it lives in a place we automatically recognise as wild, whereas the Superb dwells in the midst of human artifice. Its presence there reminds us of the resilience of the wild, its persistence even in environments humans have radically transformed. The resilience of the wild is not boundless, and if we're prepared to listen, the fairy-wren and its backyard bird companions might tell us of the need to protect their homes by preserving the remnants of nature around our own. Backyard birds are living proof that wild creatures can thrive in the interstices between the humanised and the natural worlds. But none can survive the obliteration of the wild. Backyard birds are, mostly, common species; and commonness can dim appreciation, as I've earlier noted in relation to the beauty of Galahs. Yet the other side of commonness is familiarity, which can boost our appreciation of birds, fostering closer and more amiable relations. That's what Neville Cayley was intimating when he nominated the Superb Fairy-wren as Australia's 'favourite' among 'this family of feathered jewels': Perhaps this is because he is abundant in the more populous parts and therefore is more closely associated with our home life. He is quite common in gardens, both public and private, right in the heart of our cities and towns.... No matter where you meet him, you will always find him a charming, trustful little bird, ever ready, with a little encouragement, to make friends. There's more than a touch of anthropomorphism in Cayley's words, but that enhances, rather than diminishes, the point he's making. As classical scholar and birder Jeremy Mynott argues, 'some degree of anthropomorphism is probably both unavoidable and positively desirable' when we bring birds into our orbit of understanding and empathy. That's especially the case for the birds who live daily among us. Through birders' writings on backyard birds, stretching back more than a century, flows a message that, beneath the superficial ordinariness of suburbia, extraordinary things can be found if only we take the trouble to look. The same message is evident in bird art. Peter Trusler's paintings in the 1980 coffee-table book Birds of Australian Gardens are exemplary, conveying the beauty of suburban birds with stunning realism. Many are depicted alongside artificial props: the Willie Wagtail perches on a garden tap; the Red Wattlebird, on a plastic feeder; the Laughing Kookaburra, on a timber table with a lump of minced meat beside it; and a pair of Superb Fairy-wrens disport among exotic creepers in a rock garden. Making the message explicit, Trusler tells us in an 'Artist's Note' that he 'tried to capture something of the "living magic" that the authors and I find as we watch birds go about their daily activities. It can be just as equally appreciated in the man-made tapestry of the urban environs as in the natural splendour of the wilds'. As Trusler's words attest, there's a dichotomy built into our language that divides the urban from the wild. Yet one of the wonderful things about birding - and this is a point Trusler was getting at - is its revelation that birds bridge that divide. Birds live wild in urban spaces. They are, usually, the most visible, most beautiful, and most captivating wild creatures that we encounter around our homes. A compelling motive behind birdwatching is to touch the wild, and the fact that we can fulfil that primal desire in places near home adds to the pastime's appeal. Of course, birders also venture further afield; and as the capacity to do so has expanded, via cars, planes, and all the wonders of modernity, so birders' horizons have widened. But birders still take joy in fairy-wrens bouncing brightly around the backyard, magpies carolling from the clothesline, and sunbirds nesting on the back verandah. These are simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary: vignettes of an avian world so close we can touch it, so similar we can embrace it, yet so different from the business of humans that we can never fully comprehend it. Of the birds that bring wild beauty into our urban spaces, none is more exquisite and captivating than the Superb Fairy-wren, writes birdwatcher RUSSELL McGREGOR, the author of Enchantment by Birds. Superb Fairy-wrens abounded in the garden of the apartment in inner-suburban Canberra where I lived while researching my book, Enchantment by Birds. Iridescent-blue and purple-black males bounced across the lawn and scuttled into the shrubbery alongside their fawn-feathered female and juvenile companions. Superb Fairy-wrens are common in other cities too, including Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, as well as in the farmlands and bushlands between those south-eastern capitals. In and around Perth, their place is taken by the even more dazzling Splendid Fairy-wren, the males sporting an electric violet-blue plumage that shimmers in the sunlight. In northern cities such as Darwin and Townsville, the common fairy-wren is the Red-backed species, coloured jet-black overall with a vivid scarlet saddle. There are six other species of fairy-wren scattered across Australia, ensuring that almost every town and city on the continent either hosts these gorgeous jewels of birdlife or at least has them living nearby. Fairy-wrens are some of the most exquisite birds that can easily be found close to home, but they certainly aren't the only ones. Urban and suburban areas abound with birdlife. Where I live on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, we're visited daily by Pale-headed Rosellas, Rainbow Lorikeets, Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos, Grey Butcherbirds, Lewin's Honeyeaters, Crested Pigeons, and many more. Occasionally, Rose-crowned Fruit-Doves and Regent Bowerbirds drop by; and there are several species, including Noisy Pitta and Russet-tailed Thrush, that we can hear in nearby bushland but never see. In eight years' residence here, I've recorded 94 species from my backyard. There's a local fairy-wren, too. Here, it's the Variegated Fairy-wren, rather like the Superb, but with bright chestnut shoulder patches. With such a profusion of birdlife, it's unsurprising that lots of birding is done within urban bounds. In 1998, Birds Australia began a Birds in Backyards project to coordinate urban observations into a major research, education, and conservation program. Since 2014, the same organisation, renamed BirdLife Australia, has conducted an annual Aussie Backyard Bird Count. It recently shed the second word, but most observations are still done in backyards. Drawing tens of thousands of eager participants, according to BirdLife it's 'one of Australia's biggest citizen science events!' Its name is new, as is the electronic wizardry that gets data from suburban gardens into scientific datasets. But birding in backyards, like citizen science itself, is far from novel. One hundred years ago, Harry Wolstenholme, son of the suffragette Maybanke Anderson, was an avid birdwatcher who did most of his watching in his garden in the northern Sydney suburb of Wahroonga. Sometimes, he backyard-birded alone; sometimes in company with birding legends of the day such as Keith Hindwood, Alec Chisholm, and Norman Chaffer. They not only admired Wahroonga's birdlife; they meticulously recorded it and published their observations in the Emu. A glance through early issues of that journal reveals numerous articles on urban birds. One, by Wolstenholme in 1922, was a bird list for his suburb, with annotations combining affectionate appreciations with astute observations on each species. Superb Fairy-wrens (which he called Blue Wren-Warblers) he found especially charming, delighting in the 'bright warblings of these lovely little birds' that could 'be heard in every garden as they hop and flit about among the small plants and creepers'. Wolstenholme's own garden was an avian haven, arranged to encourage the birds to interact with him. To promote that process, he fed them, and, like others at the time, he had no compunctions about acknowledging the fact. Writing in the Emu in 1929, he explained how he fostered friendship with Superb Fairy-wrens: 'These little fellows, like many of the garden birds, are very fond of cheese. While writing these notes on the verandah I have had to stop now and then to throw morsels to a pair of birds that came close below me in expectation of getting some.' Wolstenholme not only fed his avian friends; he encouraged them to perch on his fingers as they did so. Quite a few obliged. His 1929 Emu article included a photograph of a Grey Shrike-thrush eating from his hand. He even fed a Lewin's Honeyeater by holding sugared water in his cupped palm while the bird perched on his fingers to lap up the sweet liquid. This was hands-on birding. Recounting Wolstenholme's suburban birding exploits in his 1932 book Nature Fantasy in Australia, Alec Chisholm lauded such interactions unreservedly. Like Wolstenholme, Chisholm considered it wonderful that birds and people had built relationships of love and trust. He considered it wonderful, too, that such connections with wild birds could so readily be made in suburbia. Despite its title, Nature Fantasy in Australia covered only a small portion of the continent: the area within a 50-mile radius of Sydney's GPO. In it, Chisholm wrote rapturously about the birds, animals and plants that dwelt there, and meditated on how the natural environment still shaped human life in and around Australia's biggest city. Setting the tone, the book's frontispiece is a painting by Neville Cayley captioned 'The Spirit of Sydney: Scarlet Honeyeater at nest in suburban garden.' The fact that this exquisite little bird was common in Sydney's gardens exemplifies Chisholm's theme of urban Australians' ready access to the wonders of nature. That theme pervades all his writings, not just Nature Fantasy. One of Australia's most accomplished birders of the mid-20th century, Chisholm did most of his birding in and near the towns and cities of south-eastern Australia. He never visited the remote outback. Through his writings, he tried to persuade his compatriots to cherish the everyday birds, animals, and plants around them. While sometimes he turned to more distant topics, he mostly celebrated the familiar nature that his fellow Australians could experience inside and just beyond their back fences. Chisholm was not alone in this. Many of his birding friends and contemporaries - including such notables as Keith Hindwood and Arnold McGill in Sydney, and Charles Bryant and Roy Wheeler in Melbourne - also wrote prolifically about the birds of urban and near-urban places, and, like him, did much of their birdwatching there. Partly, this was due to practicalities. Especially in the early decades of the 20th century, the difficulties of travel restricted birders' options, and put visiting remote places beyond the reach of many. Yet even as the outback opened up, as cars and roads improved, four-wheel-drive vehicles became available, and air travel became cheaper, birders continued to do much of their birding no more than an hour or two from home. The growing accessibility of elsewhere opened new options, but the familiar places near home - the 'local patch', to use the insiders' idiom - retained birdwatchers' loyalties. From its inception in 1952 through to its demise over half a century later, the Bird Observers' Club's monthly magazine, the Bird Observer, devoted between a half and a third of each issue to birding in and near urban locations. Even as the magazine reported on birding excursions to ever more esoteric places in Australia and ever more exotic locales overseas, it continued to keep readers informed about the everyday birds its members encountered in their everyday lives. Many Bird Observer articles reported observations from birders' backyards. Gay Grogan began one on birding in suburban Croydon in the June 1985 issue by exclaiming how 'absolutely delighted' she was 'to see the annual visit of the Fairy Wren to my backyard', then listed dozens of species she had seen there. Entranced by 'their graceful aerial ballet' and entertaining antics, she intimated that the 'gamut of emotions' stirred by the birds in her backyard made her life richer and more fulfilling. Barbara Burns of Templestowe contributed a piece on 'Birds on a busy schedule', fondly describing the many birds she encountered during her daily routines of housekeeping, taking the kids to school, and heading off to work. By putting her in touch with the wild, birds offered respite from mundane matters, even though the wild with which she connected was just off a suburban street. In the 1990s, Molly Brown regularly contributed articles to the Bird Observer on the birds she saw around her home in Manjimup, Western Australia. In typical birdwatcher fashion, she combined expressions of affection for the birds with acute observations about their behaviour. An article on 'Our resident swallows' inquired into those birds' breeding and migratory habits, while another on a 'Roadside walk' discussed birds' adaptations to roads and roadside vegetation corridors. In 'Watching at the window', she delighted in the birds she saw through the casement windows of her living room, without venturing outside. 'A variety of birds come', she wrote, 'but star billing is given to the Splendid Fairy-wren and the Red-winged Fairy-wren. A full plumage male fairy-wren must be high on the list of the world's most beautiful birds, and ... fairy-wrens have endearing characters, too.' Urban birding extends far beyond admiring fairy-wrens from the comfort of the lounge-room. It can uncover some out-of-the-way birds in some not-so-pretty places. Arnold McGill, reminiscing in 1980 on half a century of birding in Sydney, recalled with fondness the Malabar headland 'where the sewer outfall attracted a great number of sea-birds', making it 'as good as any place in the world to watch sea-birds, outside the Antarctic'. He had seen as many as 548 Wandering Albatrosses there in a single day, as well as Black-browed and White-capped Albatrosses, Giant Petrels, and several species of shearwater and prion. Alas, 'the so-called march of progress' put an end to that superb site for seabird-watching in suburban Sydney. Melbourne birders were, and still are, able to get more up-close and personal with sewage-loving birds. Werribee Sewage Farm, now blandly - and therefore inaptly - renamed the Western Treatment Plant, lies just off the freeway between Melbourne and Geelong. So prolific is its birdlife that Werribee has been declared a Ramsar site, and attracts birders not only from Melbourne, but from all over Australia and beyond. Twitcher Sue Taylor maintains that 'it is impossible to have a bad day birding at Werribee'. Waders and waterbirds are the most abundant attractions, but Werribee also hosts numerous other species, including the critically endangered Orange-bellied Parrot and the closely related Blue-winged Parrot. A sewage farm may not meet everyone's ideal as a place to commune with nature, but it provides crucial habitat for rare and threatened species, including some that come halfway around the world to banquet on its abundance. Smaller though similarly smelly urban locales have long attracted birders as well as birds. In 1947, Charles Bryant published a tribute to the birds of Fishermen's Bend near Port Melbourne. Subtitling his article 'Beauty in a Municipal Garbage Tip', Bryant revelled in both the diversity and the tenacity of the birds to be found there. 'Undeterred by the mephitic aroma of the burning tip, the birds go about their lawful occasions', he observed; and they were just as beautiful and just as fascinating as birds in less easily accessible - if also less malodorous - places. This, and the numerous other instances of birders delighting in rubbish dumps, sewage farms, and the like, testifies to the transformative magic of birds, enabling us to penetrate beyond the superficial unsightliness - and smelliness - of such places and there behold the mysteries of nature. The romance of birds may be transformative, but some birders took the romance of the sewage plant literally. Graham Pizzey, recounting the lead-up to his marriage to Sue Taylor in 1957, remarked that, 'Quite often ... we did our courting at the Werribee sewerage farm.' It's clear from his recollections that the choice of place was his, not Sue's. Still, as Pizzey went on to explain, his romance in a sewage farm led into a long and happy marriage, and there's something delightfully apt about one of Australia's greatest field guide authors fluffing his courtship feathers at a place whose richness in birdlife resulted from some of humanity's baser functions. Sewage farms are the haunt of dedicated birders, but less smelly suburban sites offer equally engrossing birds. Legendary twitcher Sean Dooley began his zany birdwatching guidebook, Anoraks to Zitting Cisticolas, by describing an encounter with a flock of Musk Lorikeets in a busy carpark in the bayside Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Although he loved seeing rare birds in far-flung places, Dooley admitted 'the truth is that these car park lorikeets a mere five minutes from my home offer the quintessential birding experience'. It's not just that the lorikeets are pretty, although that helps. More importantly, they juxtapose the wild and the human in ways that illuminate our continuing connectedness with nature. The birds impress themselves upon our senses; they confront us with their raucously colourful reality; they tell us, visually and vocally, that even here, in a superficially soulless suburban carpark, nature not only survives, but thrives. As Dooley attests, birding at a local patch remains popular even among twitchers. Convenience, undoubtedly, is a factor, but there's more to it than that. It's also because birders - including twitchers - treasure the birds near home. Birding near home may seldom secure new ticks for seasoned birdwatchers. Yet while most birders enjoy adding new ticks to their lists, very few are interested in nothing but ticking. For most birders, today as in the past, a core component of birding is encountering the wild; and the wild near home can be as fascinating, as puzzling, as beautiful, and as awesome as the wild further afield. Moreover, engaging with the wild near home has an appeal of its own, since it attunes us to the rhythms and syncopations of nature that throb through even the urban environs where most of us live. Hearing the first Koel in September, or the Pied Butcherbird singing every day of the year; watching Superb Fairy-wrens transmute from drab to debonaire as breeding beckons, or Galahs clowning in unvarying costumes of pink and grey; being alert to the flitting, fleeting influx of Scarlet Honeyeaters when the right trees blossom, or the eternal, exasperating presence of Noisy Miners: these and hundreds of other common avian activities have captivated birdwatchers since the pastime's inception, and drawn them into an intimate awareness of how nature changes, remains constant and alternates between the two. They're among the innumerable interactions with birds we can experience close to home, inducting us into a world beyond humanity, but not beyond our capacity for empathetic connection. Alertness to birdlife enhances our appreciation of home by making us aware of its proximity to the wild. In some ways, the intimacy with nature that birders seek is easier to find when engaging with the familiar birds around home than with unfamiliar species in far-flung places. Birding close to home may not be a wilderness experience, but it's a way of touching the wild, with all the wonderment that can arouse. A Superb Fairy-wren in the backyard is as wondrous as a Purple-crowned Fairy-wren in a pandanus thicket beside a river in the Kimberleys, even if they're wondrous in somewhat different ways. The Superb Fairy-wren in the backyard is an emissary of the wild. So is its Purple-crowned cousin beside that river in the Kimberleys, but it lives in a place we automatically recognise as wild, whereas the Superb dwells in the midst of human artifice. Its presence there reminds us of the resilience of the wild, its persistence even in environments humans have radically transformed. The resilience of the wild is not boundless, and if we're prepared to listen, the fairy-wren and its backyard bird companions might tell us of the need to protect their homes by preserving the remnants of nature around our own. Backyard birds are living proof that wild creatures can thrive in the interstices between the humanised and the natural worlds. But none can survive the obliteration of the wild. Backyard birds are, mostly, common species; and commonness can dim appreciation, as I've earlier noted in relation to the beauty of Galahs. Yet the other side of commonness is familiarity, which can boost our appreciation of birds, fostering closer and more amiable relations. That's what Neville Cayley was intimating when he nominated the Superb Fairy-wren as Australia's 'favourite' among 'this family of feathered jewels': Perhaps this is because he is abundant in the more populous parts and therefore is more closely associated with our home life. He is quite common in gardens, both public and private, right in the heart of our cities and towns.... No matter where you meet him, you will always find him a charming, trustful little bird, ever ready, with a little encouragement, to make friends. There's more than a touch of anthropomorphism in Cayley's words, but that enhances, rather than diminishes, the point he's making. As classical scholar and birder Jeremy Mynott argues, 'some degree of anthropomorphism is probably both unavoidable and positively desirable' when we bring birds into our orbit of understanding and empathy. That's especially the case for the birds who live daily among us. Through birders' writings on backyard birds, stretching back more than a century, flows a message that, beneath the superficial ordinariness of suburbia, extraordinary things can be found if only we take the trouble to look. The same message is evident in bird art. Peter Trusler's paintings in the 1980 coffee-table book Birds of Australian Gardens are exemplary, conveying the beauty of suburban birds with stunning realism. Many are depicted alongside artificial props: the Willie Wagtail perches on a garden tap; the Red Wattlebird, on a plastic feeder; the Laughing Kookaburra, on a timber table with a lump of minced meat beside it; and a pair of Superb Fairy-wrens disport among exotic creepers in a rock garden. Making the message explicit, Trusler tells us in an 'Artist's Note' that he 'tried to capture something of the "living magic" that the authors and I find as we watch birds go about their daily activities. It can be just as equally appreciated in the man-made tapestry of the urban environs as in the natural splendour of the wilds'. As Trusler's words attest, there's a dichotomy built into our language that divides the urban from the wild. Yet one of the wonderful things about birding - and this is a point Trusler was getting at - is its revelation that birds bridge that divide. Birds live wild in urban spaces. They are, usually, the most visible, most beautiful, and most captivating wild creatures that we encounter around our homes. A compelling motive behind birdwatching is to touch the wild, and the fact that we can fulfil that primal desire in places near home adds to the pastime's appeal. Of course, birders also venture further afield; and as the capacity to do so has expanded, via cars, planes, and all the wonders of modernity, so birders' horizons have widened. But birders still take joy in fairy-wrens bouncing brightly around the backyard, magpies carolling from the clothesline, and sunbirds nesting on the back verandah. These are simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary: vignettes of an avian world so close we can touch it, so similar we can embrace it, yet so different from the business of humans that we can never fully comprehend it. Of the birds that bring wild beauty into our urban spaces, none is more exquisite and captivating than the Superb Fairy-wren, writes birdwatcher RUSSELL McGREGOR, the author of Enchantment by Birds. Superb Fairy-wrens abounded in the garden of the apartment in inner-suburban Canberra where I lived while researching my book, Enchantment by Birds. Iridescent-blue and purple-black males bounced across the lawn and scuttled into the shrubbery alongside their fawn-feathered female and juvenile companions. Superb Fairy-wrens are common in other cities too, including Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, as well as in the farmlands and bushlands between those south-eastern capitals. In and around Perth, their place is taken by the even more dazzling Splendid Fairy-wren, the males sporting an electric violet-blue plumage that shimmers in the sunlight. In northern cities such as Darwin and Townsville, the common fairy-wren is the Red-backed species, coloured jet-black overall with a vivid scarlet saddle. There are six other species of fairy-wren scattered across Australia, ensuring that almost every town and city on the continent either hosts these gorgeous jewels of birdlife or at least has them living nearby. Fairy-wrens are some of the most exquisite birds that can easily be found close to home, but they certainly aren't the only ones. Urban and suburban areas abound with birdlife. Where I live on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, we're visited daily by Pale-headed Rosellas, Rainbow Lorikeets, Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos, Grey Butcherbirds, Lewin's Honeyeaters, Crested Pigeons, and many more. Occasionally, Rose-crowned Fruit-Doves and Regent Bowerbirds drop by; and there are several species, including Noisy Pitta and Russet-tailed Thrush, that we can hear in nearby bushland but never see. In eight years' residence here, I've recorded 94 species from my backyard. There's a local fairy-wren, too. Here, it's the Variegated Fairy-wren, rather like the Superb, but with bright chestnut shoulder patches. With such a profusion of birdlife, it's unsurprising that lots of birding is done within urban bounds. In 1998, Birds Australia began a Birds in Backyards project to coordinate urban observations into a major research, education, and conservation program. Since 2014, the same organisation, renamed BirdLife Australia, has conducted an annual Aussie Backyard Bird Count. It recently shed the second word, but most observations are still done in backyards. Drawing tens of thousands of eager participants, according to BirdLife it's 'one of Australia's biggest citizen science events!' Its name is new, as is the electronic wizardry that gets data from suburban gardens into scientific datasets. But birding in backyards, like citizen science itself, is far from novel. One hundred years ago, Harry Wolstenholme, son of the suffragette Maybanke Anderson, was an avid birdwatcher who did most of his watching in his garden in the northern Sydney suburb of Wahroonga. Sometimes, he backyard-birded alone; sometimes in company with birding legends of the day such as Keith Hindwood, Alec Chisholm, and Norman Chaffer. They not only admired Wahroonga's birdlife; they meticulously recorded it and published their observations in the Emu. A glance through early issues of that journal reveals numerous articles on urban birds. One, by Wolstenholme in 1922, was a bird list for his suburb, with annotations combining affectionate appreciations with astute observations on each species. Superb Fairy-wrens (which he called Blue Wren-Warblers) he found especially charming, delighting in the 'bright warblings of these lovely little birds' that could 'be heard in every garden as they hop and flit about among the small plants and creepers'. Wolstenholme's own garden was an avian haven, arranged to encourage the birds to interact with him. To promote that process, he fed them, and, like others at the time, he had no compunctions about acknowledging the fact. Writing in the Emu in 1929, he explained how he fostered friendship with Superb Fairy-wrens: 'These little fellows, like many of the garden birds, are very fond of cheese. While writing these notes on the verandah I have had to stop now and then to throw morsels to a pair of birds that came close below me in expectation of getting some.' Wolstenholme not only fed his avian friends; he encouraged them to perch on his fingers as they did so. Quite a few obliged. His 1929 Emu article included a photograph of a Grey Shrike-thrush eating from his hand. He even fed a Lewin's Honeyeater by holding sugared water in his cupped palm while the bird perched on his fingers to lap up the sweet liquid. This was hands-on birding. Recounting Wolstenholme's suburban birding exploits in his 1932 book Nature Fantasy in Australia, Alec Chisholm lauded such interactions unreservedly. Like Wolstenholme, Chisholm considered it wonderful that birds and people had built relationships of love and trust. He considered it wonderful, too, that such connections with wild birds could so readily be made in suburbia. Despite its title, Nature Fantasy in Australia covered only a small portion of the continent: the area within a 50-mile radius of Sydney's GPO. In it, Chisholm wrote rapturously about the birds, animals and plants that dwelt there, and meditated on how the natural environment still shaped human life in and around Australia's biggest city. Setting the tone, the book's frontispiece is a painting by Neville Cayley captioned 'The Spirit of Sydney: Scarlet Honeyeater at nest in suburban garden.' The fact that this exquisite little bird was common in Sydney's gardens exemplifies Chisholm's theme of urban Australians' ready access to the wonders of nature. That theme pervades all his writings, not just Nature Fantasy. One of Australia's most accomplished birders of the mid-20th century, Chisholm did most of his birding in and near the towns and cities of south-eastern Australia. He never visited the remote outback. Through his writings, he tried to persuade his compatriots to cherish the everyday birds, animals, and plants around them. While sometimes he turned to more distant topics, he mostly celebrated the familiar nature that his fellow Australians could experience inside and just beyond their back fences. Chisholm was not alone in this. Many of his birding friends and contemporaries - including such notables as Keith Hindwood and Arnold McGill in Sydney, and Charles Bryant and Roy Wheeler in Melbourne - also wrote prolifically about the birds of urban and near-urban places, and, like him, did much of their birdwatching there. Partly, this was due to practicalities. Especially in the early decades of the 20th century, the difficulties of travel restricted birders' options, and put visiting remote places beyond the reach of many. Yet even as the outback opened up, as cars and roads improved, four-wheel-drive vehicles became available, and air travel became cheaper, birders continued to do much of their birding no more than an hour or two from home. The growing accessibility of elsewhere opened new options, but the familiar places near home - the 'local patch', to use the insiders' idiom - retained birdwatchers' loyalties. From its inception in 1952 through to its demise over half a century later, the Bird Observers' Club's monthly magazine, the Bird Observer, devoted between a half and a third of each issue to birding in and near urban locations. Even as the magazine reported on birding excursions to ever more esoteric places in Australia and ever more exotic locales overseas, it continued to keep readers informed about the everyday birds its members encountered in their everyday lives. Many Bird Observer articles reported observations from birders' backyards. Gay Grogan began one on birding in suburban Croydon in the June 1985 issue by exclaiming how 'absolutely delighted' she was 'to see the annual visit of the Fairy Wren to my backyard', then listed dozens of species she had seen there. Entranced by 'their graceful aerial ballet' and entertaining antics, she intimated that the 'gamut of emotions' stirred by the birds in her backyard made her life richer and more fulfilling. Barbara Burns of Templestowe contributed a piece on 'Birds on a busy schedule', fondly describing the many birds she encountered during her daily routines of housekeeping, taking the kids to school, and heading off to work. By putting her in touch with the wild, birds offered respite from mundane matters, even though the wild with which she connected was just off a suburban street. In the 1990s, Molly Brown regularly contributed articles to the Bird Observer on the birds she saw around her home in Manjimup, Western Australia. In typical birdwatcher fashion, she combined expressions of affection for the birds with acute observations about their behaviour. An article on 'Our resident swallows' inquired into those birds' breeding and migratory habits, while another on a 'Roadside walk' discussed birds' adaptations to roads and roadside vegetation corridors. In 'Watching at the window', she delighted in the birds she saw through the casement windows of her living room, without venturing outside. 'A variety of birds come', she wrote, 'but star billing is given to the Splendid Fairy-wren and the Red-winged Fairy-wren. A full plumage male fairy-wren must be high on the list of the world's most beautiful birds, and ... fairy-wrens have endearing characters, too.' Urban birding extends far beyond admiring fairy-wrens from the comfort of the lounge-room. It can uncover some out-of-the-way birds in some not-so-pretty places. Arnold McGill, reminiscing in 1980 on half a century of birding in Sydney, recalled with fondness the Malabar headland 'where the sewer outfall attracted a great number of sea-birds', making it 'as good as any place in the world to watch sea-birds, outside the Antarctic'. He had seen as many as 548 Wandering Albatrosses there in a single day, as well as Black-browed and White-capped Albatrosses, Giant Petrels, and several species of shearwater and prion. Alas, 'the so-called march of progress' put an end to that superb site for seabird-watching in suburban Sydney. Melbourne birders were, and still are, able to get more up-close and personal with sewage-loving birds. Werribee Sewage Farm, now blandly - and therefore inaptly - renamed the Western Treatment Plant, lies just off the freeway between Melbourne and Geelong. So prolific is its birdlife that Werribee has been declared a Ramsar site, and attracts birders not only from Melbourne, but from all over Australia and beyond. Twitcher Sue Taylor maintains that 'it is impossible to have a bad day birding at Werribee'. Waders and waterbirds are the most abundant attractions, but Werribee also hosts numerous other species, including the critically endangered Orange-bellied Parrot and the closely related Blue-winged Parrot. A sewage farm may not meet everyone's ideal as a place to commune with nature, but it provides crucial habitat for rare and threatened species, including some that come halfway around the world to banquet on its abundance. Smaller though similarly smelly urban locales have long attracted birders as well as birds. In 1947, Charles Bryant published a tribute to the birds of Fishermen's Bend near Port Melbourne. Subtitling his article 'Beauty in a Municipal Garbage Tip', Bryant revelled in both the diversity and the tenacity of the birds to be found there. 'Undeterred by the mephitic aroma of the burning tip, the birds go about their lawful occasions', he observed; and they were just as beautiful and just as fascinating as birds in less easily accessible - if also less malodorous - places. This, and the numerous other instances of birders delighting in rubbish dumps, sewage farms, and the like, testifies to the transformative magic of birds, enabling us to penetrate beyond the superficial unsightliness - and smelliness - of such places and there behold the mysteries of nature. The romance of birds may be transformative, but some birders took the romance of the sewage plant literally. Graham Pizzey, recounting the lead-up to his marriage to Sue Taylor in 1957, remarked that, 'Quite often ... we did our courting at the Werribee sewerage farm.' It's clear from his recollections that the choice of place was his, not Sue's. Still, as Pizzey went on to explain, his romance in a sewage farm led into a long and happy marriage, and there's something delightfully apt about one of Australia's greatest field guide authors fluffing his courtship feathers at a place whose richness in birdlife resulted from some of humanity's baser functions. Sewage farms are the haunt of dedicated birders, but less smelly suburban sites offer equally engrossing birds. Legendary twitcher Sean Dooley began his zany birdwatching guidebook, Anoraks to Zitting Cisticolas, by describing an encounter with a flock of Musk Lorikeets in a busy carpark in the bayside Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Although he loved seeing rare birds in far-flung places, Dooley admitted 'the truth is that these car park lorikeets a mere five minutes from my home offer the quintessential birding experience'. It's not just that the lorikeets are pretty, although that helps. More importantly, they juxtapose the wild and the human in ways that illuminate our continuing connectedness with nature. The birds impress themselves upon our senses; they confront us with their raucously colourful reality; they tell us, visually and vocally, that even here, in a superficially soulless suburban carpark, nature not only survives, but thrives. As Dooley attests, birding at a local patch remains popular even among twitchers. Convenience, undoubtedly, is a factor, but there's more to it than that. It's also because birders - including twitchers - treasure the birds near home. Birding near home may seldom secure new ticks for seasoned birdwatchers. Yet while most birders enjoy adding new ticks to their lists, very few are interested in nothing but ticking. For most birders, today as in the past, a core component of birding is encountering the wild; and the wild near home can be as fascinating, as puzzling, as beautiful, and as awesome as the wild further afield. Moreover, engaging with the wild near home has an appeal of its own, since it attunes us to the rhythms and syncopations of nature that throb through even the urban environs where most of us live. Hearing the first Koel in September, or the Pied Butcherbird singing every day of the year; watching Superb Fairy-wrens transmute from drab to debonaire as breeding beckons, or Galahs clowning in unvarying costumes of pink and grey; being alert to the flitting, fleeting influx of Scarlet Honeyeaters when the right trees blossom, or the eternal, exasperating presence of Noisy Miners: these and hundreds of other common avian activities have captivated birdwatchers since the pastime's inception, and drawn them into an intimate awareness of how nature changes, remains constant and alternates between the two. They're among the innumerable interactions with birds we can experience close to home, inducting us into a world beyond humanity, but not beyond our capacity for empathetic connection. Alertness to birdlife enhances our appreciation of home by making us aware of its proximity to the wild. In some ways, the intimacy with nature that birders seek is easier to find when engaging with the familiar birds around home than with unfamiliar species in far-flung places. Birding close to home may not be a wilderness experience, but it's a way of touching the wild, with all the wonderment that can arouse. A Superb Fairy-wren in the backyard is as wondrous as a Purple-crowned Fairy-wren in a pandanus thicket beside a river in the Kimberleys, even if they're wondrous in somewhat different ways. The Superb Fairy-wren in the backyard is an emissary of the wild. So is its Purple-crowned cousin beside that river in the Kimberleys, but it lives in a place we automatically recognise as wild, whereas the Superb dwells in the midst of human artifice. Its presence there reminds us of the resilience of the wild, its persistence even in environments humans have radically transformed. The resilience of the wild is not boundless, and if we're prepared to listen, the fairy-wren and its backyard bird companions might tell us of the need to protect their homes by preserving the remnants of nature around our own. Backyard birds are living proof that wild creatures can thrive in the interstices between the humanised and the natural worlds. But none can survive the obliteration of the wild. Backyard birds are, mostly, common species; and commonness can dim appreciation, as I've earlier noted in relation to the beauty of Galahs. Yet the other side of commonness is familiarity, which can boost our appreciation of birds, fostering closer and more amiable relations. That's what Neville Cayley was intimating when he nominated the Superb Fairy-wren as Australia's 'favourite' among 'this family of feathered jewels': Perhaps this is because he is abundant in the more populous parts and therefore is more closely associated with our home life. He is quite common in gardens, both public and private, right in the heart of our cities and towns.... No matter where you meet him, you will always find him a charming, trustful little bird, ever ready, with a little encouragement, to make friends. There's more than a touch of anthropomorphism in Cayley's words, but that enhances, rather than diminishes, the point he's making. As classical scholar and birder Jeremy Mynott argues, 'some degree of anthropomorphism is probably both unavoidable and positively desirable' when we bring birds into our orbit of understanding and empathy. That's especially the case for the birds who live daily among us. Through birders' writings on backyard birds, stretching back more than a century, flows a message that, beneath the superficial ordinariness of suburbia, extraordinary things can be found if only we take the trouble to look. The same message is evident in bird art. Peter Trusler's paintings in the 1980 coffee-table book Birds of Australian Gardens are exemplary, conveying the beauty of suburban birds with stunning realism. Many are depicted alongside artificial props: the Willie Wagtail perches on a garden tap; the Red Wattlebird, on a plastic feeder; the Laughing Kookaburra, on a timber table with a lump of minced meat beside it; and a pair of Superb Fairy-wrens disport among exotic creepers in a rock garden. Making the message explicit, Trusler tells us in an 'Artist's Note' that he 'tried to capture something of the "living magic" that the authors and I find as we watch birds go about their daily activities. It can be just as equally appreciated in the man-made tapestry of the urban environs as in the natural splendour of the wilds'. As Trusler's words attest, there's a dichotomy built into our language that divides the urban from the wild. Yet one of the wonderful things about birding - and this is a point Trusler was getting at - is its revelation that birds bridge that divide. Birds live wild in urban spaces. They are, usually, the most visible, most beautiful, and most captivating wild creatures that we encounter around our homes. A compelling motive behind birdwatching is to touch the wild, and the fact that we can fulfil that primal desire in places near home adds to the pastime's appeal. Of course, birders also venture further afield; and as the capacity to do so has expanded, via cars, planes, and all the wonders of modernity, so birders' horizons have widened. But birders still take joy in fairy-wrens bouncing brightly around the backyard, magpies carolling from the clothesline, and sunbirds nesting on the back verandah. These are simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary: vignettes of an avian world so close we can touch it, so similar we can embrace it, yet so different from the business of humans that we can never fully comprehend it.
The Guardian
06-05-2025
- The Guardian
Hundreds of little corellas killed in suspected poisoning attack in regional Victorian city
Victoria's conservation regulator has launched an investigation into the suspected fatal poisoning of 300 little corellas in Horsham, in the state's north-west. The incident, which began on Tuesday last week, has killed hundreds of protected birds in a popular park near the Wimmera river, just south of the city centre. 'It's illegal and dangerous to poison wildlife and we're calling on the community to come forward with any information they might have that will help us to track down whoever is responsible,' said Kate Gavens, chief conservation regulator. Samples from dead birds have been taken for testing, Gavens said. The incident follows a mass poisoning of more than 200 little corellas in Newcastle, which New South Wales authorities revealed was caused by a common agricultural pesticide. Glenn Coffey, who manages the Horsham Riverside caravan park near where the birds were found, first noticed large numbers of sick and dying birds on 29 April. 'They were just sitting on the banks, falling out of the trees – they were drowning,' he said. Sick birds were still turning up one week on. 'They don't move,' he said. 'It looks like they're standing up sleeping.' Coffey was concerned the dead birds had begun appearing in a popular garden area on the river, frequented by food trucks and recently 'done up' by the local council. 'It's not just the birds. You've got people playing there on the grass. You've got ducks walking around, all different breeds of birds. You've got people walking their dogs.' Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Horsham Rural city council has undertaken an extensive clean-up of the affected area. Council workers have been collecting dead birds by boat and on foot. 'Teams have also removed grain suspected to be poisoned, using vacuum cleaners in grassed areas and covering larger patches to prevent further harm to wildlife,' a council statement said. In January, Victoria's conservation regulator and agriculture department investigated another suspected poisoning of dozens of corellas in the rural town of Wunghnu, in northern Victoria, but was unable to determine the cause of the birds' deaths. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Dr Holly Parsons, who manages the urban bird program at BirdLife Australia, said corellas had adapted well to cities and towns and often attracted attention for their engaging antics. Corellas were often attracted to well-watered gardens and sports fields, and enjoyed digging in the roots of lush lawns. 'We've created great places for them. We built it, and they've come,' she said. But the birds' playful and 'quite cheeky' nature had contributed to the perception among some that corellas were a pest, she said. The birds explored with their beaks and could cause damage to crops and infrastructure, she said. 'They can chew rubber, they can get into plastic fittings. They can cause a little bit of chaos. 'The other side of that is that they are really intelligent birds. They are really social birds. So they love being around in noisy flocks.' The conservation regulator said corellas were protected under Victoria's Wildlife Act, and there were 'significant penalties for unlawfully hunting, taking or destroying protected wildlife, including imprisonment'. 'If you find dead or sick birds, do not touch or move them. Instead, take photos, note the location, and report clusters of five or more dead or sick birds by calling the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action.'
