Photostory

It’s early Spring and I’m staying on the 7^th floor of one of many high-rise buildings in inner-city West End. While the wide river is just nearby, this area is not regarded as a place you would go to experience ‘nature’. But here it is, loudly announcing its presence as the voices of birds bounce off the glass and concrete walls of these tall buildings.

In the first days of the mating season, these birds are claiming territory and calling to females in their loudest and best voices.

At 6.30 am the grey butcherbird serenades me with a low, flute-like, whistling song. The sound resonates between the buildings and it’s almost as if the bird is in the room. His song is so melodious and trilling I stay in bed listening, mesmerised.  Male butcherbirds sing a courting song that one source describes as ‘rollicking’ and tells me that often two or more birds in a group sing in duets so harmonious that you wouldn’t realise more than one bird was singing. Different phrases are sung sequentially or sometimes overlap and the butcherbird’s songs can last for up to 15 minutes.

I didn’t realise that they are called ‘butcher’ birds because they hang their dead prey─ lizards, mice, beetles, insects and smaller birds─  in a tree fork for later, just as human butchers do. Ironically, this naming acknowledges that the birds are as practical as humans. Yet, at the same time humans dislike them because they kill other birds.  And then I read that butcherbirds will utter a loud, harsh cry and swoop defensively when their chicks have hatched. Wildlife QLD website urges walkers and cyclists to make eye contact, as the birds will rarely attack if you do. Such beautiful vocalists and such astute defenders of their young. . . .

By the time the pied currawong sings, I can hear the low hum of traffic across the river. The currawong’s song is quite different from a butcherbird’s. It’s bright, whistling and cackling and seems to say ‘get up, get up!’. The name ‘currawong’ is believed to derive from the word garrawan in the language of the Jagera people of the Brisbane region. In the language of the birds their ‘curra-wong, curra-wong’ is a piercing call that carries long distances. These birds have quite distinct local dialects and often form flocks as they travel to feed on the fruit of the Lilli Pilli trees. They are handsome black birds with white on wing and tail and round, bright yellow eyes. They sing as they call to family, warn them about predators, or report on the weather.

Eastern koels, a member of the cuckoo family, have recently arrived from south-east Asia, as they do every spring. Their voices come in with a long, low and rather sad kawwwat, kawwwwat. As if pleading for a mate or wishing they were home. They are in such a hurry they lay single eggs in the nests of other birds. Figbirds, friarbirds and magpie larks then become exhausted from their efforts to raise  babies who grow twice the size of their foster parents.

But it’s the deep ‘squark’ of another cuckoo that gets me out of bed.

Channel-billed cuckoos have a raucous call, quite sudden and startling. Females persistently call to males at this time of the year, often through the night according to my online sources. Both the koels and  the channel-billed cuckoos are often called rainbirds or stormbirds because their calls increase before the summer storms in this sub-tropical regions. Like the koels, they migrate to Queensland in the spring and summer and lay their eggs in other bird’s nests─ often pied currawong’s nests. These cuckoos fossick in the undergrowth of the gardens along the river with their great, hooked beaks, while their long tails help them steer through the air as they move through the forest of tall buildings.

Both these visitors from Asia are invaluable to healthy environments in Queensland, as they spread the seeds of native figs and other plants and contribute to maintaining local ecosystems.

It’s a cacophony of birdsong I hear in the morning in Brisbane. This doesn’t happen in Hobart. I’m very glad to be here, even for a few weeks, to remind me that animals, birds, insects (fearing for their lives) and tiny invisible microbes are everywhere, even in cities densely and determinedly populated by humans.