December, and usually blue skies and predictable winds on Whadjuk country. But today there is cold wind and nimbus and rain. And I can’t help noticing that it is also new moon today—with rain, again.
Category Archives: Nature Poetry
The Animals Approach
Wardandi country with nephew Fin and a similar thing is happening to around this time last year. When he first arrived in Australia and we went to Dwellingup, he would say things like, ”Have you ever seen a goanna?” and there would be one. “What about an emu?” and soon after one would appear. Then we went to Dunsborough. “Snakes?” and then we’d see one. “You’d better be careful what you ask next,” I said. The following day, while walking next to the shallows of Geographe Bay, he asked if I’d ever seen a shark up close. We then saw a shovelnose where I’d never seen one before; it was headed one way, so we doubled back and decided to have a quick swim. Fin decided to go further out. He’s adamant the shark brushed his leg.
That was all last year. This time when we go to Wardandi Country he doesn’t say anything. But when we sit and have lunch at Yallingup, a yoornt bobtail/blutongue lizard emerges from out the bushes, across a long stretch of grass and comes right to our feet; I have to erect a kind of wall of thongs and towel to keep him at bay. The seagulls were a little bit more predictable. That evening at Castle Rock carpark quenda the bandicoot appears from near the barbecues and comes within a couple of arm lengths. Shortly after, karda the goanna lazily turns around by the edge of the Meelup trail to look at us, but doesn’t bother to move as we go by. When we put our rafts in the water we see a large baamba stingray moving in the shallows. We ride the wind all the way towards Meelup Beach, pausing at times along the way to lie back and look out north across all the water of the bay. Coming into Meelup we pass through a couple of large white rocks of roosting cormorants—appearing like a kind of gauntlet—with only one or two birds on nearby smaller rocks flying away as we pass. The next day, walking along the same trail, a young yonga kangaroo lifts its head and observes us no more than four metres away. We pause and wait for it to hop off, but he stays put, only moving his ears slightly. And, finally, that evening, goomal the possum arrives on the verandah. We open the door to observe him, and he begins to approach, pink nose in the air.
Just Another Lakeday
Lots of birds at the lake today, including a group in the centre of the southern end. All the usuals are here—swans, black ducks, numerous teals, coots, swamphens, wood ducks, pink ears, three hardheads, some shelducks, shovelers, and a bunch of others out of view right now. Fin and I walk the path around the edge, observing as much as we can. There are a couple of quendas near the jetty. I guess the water level to be 1.24 metres, he guesses 1.22—the gauge says 1.23 metres. The level makes it possible for many different birds in many different places to reach food across the lake. The melaleucas keep flowering, as do the yellow and red eucalypts further to the north and west. There’s a Pacific black duck with six chicks. I tell him I saw a kakka bakka the other day—he says that’s his favourite bird name—we make it to the gazebo, but I can’t see the spoonbill today. We see some more coot chicks. And then uplifts a cloud of janjarak black winged stilts with a seagull behind. At first it looks like the seagull is chasing them. But then appears on the scene the long orange wingspan of the swamp harrier again. At this point the seagull doubles back and starts to give chase. The harrier begins to move south as more stilts take to the skies, coming from every part of the lake, it seems—I had no idea there were so many. The harrier moves further south, and the seagull backs off. The harrier comes to land amongst the grass on the eastern side of the lake. It’s hard to spot him now, but there may be a wagtail harassing him in the reeds. Nothing happens for a while so we move off. Then a little later the harrier takes off again and glides on the wind, one way and then another, his big wings catching the air like a sail, and he seems to almost struggle with the change of wind direction as he circles. He’s moving further south now, and then from nowhere another bird is giving chase—it looks like a small raptor—an Australian kestrel maybe, perhaps a hobby. It dives at the harrier a few times, then peels off into a nearby tree. The harrier is hovering while looking down amongst the reeds; it hovers remarkably well for its size, sitting above one particular spot, before he comes into land, and we move on.
Mimal
On the day of the big wind I take an evening walk down to the river at Harvey Beach. This would be one of the few places in Perth slightly protected from this roaring southerly. While there I remember that nephew Fin has been telling me about a couple of chicks he’s been watching grow on a branch at the northern end of the beach. He says he sees an adult come in and feed them. I look in that direction and there they are—a couple of mimal darters, fairly large now, maybe both adolescents, maybe one adult and an adolescent, one of them burying its long needle-like beak into its feathers—at the end of a branch that overhangs the water, and which remains relatively still as tuart trees bluster and blow all around it. Further up the branch looks strangely white. And then, in the background, further upriver, I notice a solitary adult on another branch, on another tree.
The next day I return, and it is one adult and one adolescent on the branch today. No other mimal seen. And today the adult one has a stick in its beak, and it’s trying to add it to the whiter part of the branch which I now see is a nest of dead twigs. But first the younger mimal has to move off the nest, and only then can the new, grey, dead stick be placed atop the others.
Wind
A wind has sprung up overnight and blows strong, fast and slightly cold throughout the whole day. We take a walk along the beach into it—sand flies everywhere. No sandflies. It is one of the strongest winds I can remember, especially for this time of year. The following day I look at the weather maps. I see that a tropical low/monsoon trough coming down from the equator joined with a cold-front low blowing up from the southern ocean (followed by a high pressure system). This would have created the conditions necessary for extra wind to blow up from the south, and that’s exactly what happened. Nephew points out that it’s interesting this wind happened at the same time as storms in the UK, and wonders if they are connected. But my reference maps don’t stretch that far.
Central Bay Cliffs
Down on the beach for two days in a row: a lower line of small bay ridges forming smaller bays within the larger bay of Leighton Beach to Cables Station. The tide is morning low, with little variation with the mid-sky moon. The angle of the slope from flat sand down to the water is pretty gradual, 30 degrees or less, and there is a hint of bay-ridge remnants from a formerly higher tide further up the slope. Around mid bay, between the lower ridges, I notice a couple of cliff faces forming—places where the long, slow, back-and-forth of gradual tide—stormless, swell-less—leans into a kind of cliff-barrier where the water, due to what it has created in the sand, is unable to rise any higher; a cliff place where water starts to cut horizontally into the sand, rather than wash over and flatten it out, as it does further north.
Sting Ray
Walking along the ocean shoreline Sunday morning. And between the handful of scattered swimmers spread out between Leighton Beach and Cables Station I see, moving south to north, a small dark cloud. The thought ‘sting ray’ immediately comes to mind. The black cloud continues moving along the base of the light blue water, about ten metres out. It does not surface for air. Baamba sting ray it must be. Not the small ones I see often down in Geograph Bay, nor the massive ones down in Hamelin Bay, but the ones about the same size I used to see swimming the reefs between Cottesloe and North Cottesloe about twenty years ago.
Kaa Kaa
Sunday morning walk, and at one spot by the edge of a road is a collection of bird droppings—I usually look up to see if anything is sitting there. Today again there is nothing, but slightly along the power line is a kookaburra with something in its mouth. Unusually, though, he looks a little lop sided—all his tail feathers are missing. I tell my nephew and he asks if it was other kookaburras. “Don’t know,” I reply. “Crows maybe. Even djiddy djiddy the wagtail.” But really you never know unless you see it for yourself.
Dolphins and Pelicans
We’re walking upriver with a friend, and a strong south south westerly behind us. From the north west approaches boodalung the pelican, not flapping, but gliding into the wind; he gradually descends down towards the river. And down there we see one, two, three, four at least dolphins moving fast along the western edge of the sandbar; fishing, I assume. The dolphins are spread out, and gradually heading downriver. I look up again and see three more boodalung coming in from the north, flying in formation, gradually descending down onto the water above the sandbar, where they make a watery landing. This happens while the dolphins head steadily downriver along the edge of the sandbar, moving away from a boat that pursues, and past a couple of stationary others, as we head upriver at angles to the wind when the river curves and while the sun sets behind us.
Our friend is from the north also, and heads back that way tomorrow.
Kakka Bakka
Saturday morning at the lake again. My wife Katie and I are at the gazebo. And over on the (re)new(ed) eastern shoreline—a spit formerly watery, now dry—next to an all-black swan, sits an all-white bird, about two-thirds the size of his neighbour. There are also some ibis nearby in their melaleuca perch; but almost immediately I ‘know’ the all-white bird is kakka bakka—the western spoonbill. He is preening and pruning his white feathers with his long white bill which was, at first, unseen, but which comes gradually into greater view, with the spooned-out tip on its end.
The ibis with their long, curved, almost-proboscis-like bills good for spearing down deep into cracks and softer earth; the spoonbill with a long straight bill with rounded tip good for wide swinging arcs over slightly submerged ground, like a prospector surveying for gold.
John Stubley 