"smells like rarity!"
In the last week, my brother came to visit. My brother was an excellent guest, but he has quite different interests and a very specific idea of what he wanted to see on his holiday. In particular, he is very much a naturalist (and is actually a vet academic), and in particular an obsessive bird watcher. Quite often we would be looking at some breath taking scenic vista and he would explain something like 'the dusky grass wren!' and begin excitedly looking at some small non-descript bird through binoculars.
It's actually been really nice to have someone around to force me a little beyond what I would normally do around the place. I've been talking about doing the Ormiston Pound walk, reputedly the best local walking trail, for months, and we did that, and thanks to camping overnight we did it in a morning at a lovely time of day, and it was indeed spectacular, especially the section where you walk through Ormiston Gorge. And I got to see Glen Helen Gorge and its surrounding red cliff walls at the dawn.
It was also interesting to get a bit of an insight into another subculture, the hard core birdwatcher (or 'twitcher'). He told us that one of the things he was keen to see in the town, a town noted for being surrounded by a large number of sites of astonising natural beauty, was the sewage farm. Sewage ponds attract birds, you see. He quoted from a book by a birdwatching comedian, "I love the smell of sewage in the morning, it smells like rarity!" And the local water corp were, it turns out, very happy to accomodate birdwatching sewage tourism, providing him with a key and a map (in return for a deposit and indemnity form in case he fell in and drowned). And on returning from each visit to the sewage farm (his return roughly coinciding with when I woke up) he would enthuse about the bird selection.
I was able (thanks to a business contact in the natural history documentary business) to hook him up with some local birdwatching contacts, and I was able to observe their chats -- it was fascinating to watch the distinctive jargon of a very different subculture (the science of ornithology and the sub-ctulure of 'twitching' being overlapping, but distinct). I liked the way bird names were stripped to only that necessary to distinguish them, birders talking amongst themselves of a 'red-faced' or a 'yellow beaked' without having to specify whether it was a wren, a thrush, or a honey eater etc. And the very active grapevine and information exchange, sometimes carefully guarded, sometimes smugly proclaimed, of sighting places, some of them very nondescript to the rest of us. For example, we had to stop twice at a farily nondescript patch of spinifex in the middle of nowhere that was reputed to be a good place to see spinifex birds.
To the birdwatcher, many of the more spectacular birds that might attract the casual viewer like me, the majestic wedge tailed eagles and spectacular parrots etc, are old hat. Everyone has seen them, and even an unobservant buffoon like me will have caught a glimpse. No, the prize is rarity of sighting, so small, hard to see, obscure birds are the usual goals. We spent a lot of time in pursuit of the grey honeyeater, a small hard to see grey bird easily mistaken for others, for example.
For all that, I did see some wonderful things, both bird and non-bird. Buzzards, big imposing predators. Flocks of budgies in the wild, looking like improbably obvious living jewels until they fly into eucalyptus leaves, whereupon they vanish utterly (budgies being pretty similar in colour and perceived shape to a eucalyptus leaf). Close ups of black footed rock wallabies. Manificent gorges, hidden waterholes. And while it is strange to me that half the time while I was looking at these wonderful things my brother was peering through binoculars looking for small nondescript birds, I have no doubt that he also was incredibly happy with what he saw.
So, anyway, if I have been slow to get you an email or phone call or LJ comment or whatever over the last week or so, that is why. And then I went to see the Devils Marbles this weekend, as doctor_k_ has posted. If you are lucky, there will be a forthcoming photo essay on one of Australias tackiest tourist sites for your pleasure later in the week.
It's actually been really nice to have someone around to force me a little beyond what I would normally do around the place. I've been talking about doing the Ormiston Pound walk, reputedly the best local walking trail, for months, and we did that, and thanks to camping overnight we did it in a morning at a lovely time of day, and it was indeed spectacular, especially the section where you walk through Ormiston Gorge. And I got to see Glen Helen Gorge and its surrounding red cliff walls at the dawn.
It was also interesting to get a bit of an insight into another subculture, the hard core birdwatcher (or 'twitcher'). He told us that one of the things he was keen to see in the town, a town noted for being surrounded by a large number of sites of astonising natural beauty, was the sewage farm. Sewage ponds attract birds, you see. He quoted from a book by a birdwatching comedian, "I love the smell of sewage in the morning, it smells like rarity!" And the local water corp were, it turns out, very happy to accomodate birdwatching sewage tourism, providing him with a key and a map (in return for a deposit and indemnity form in case he fell in and drowned). And on returning from each visit to the sewage farm (his return roughly coinciding with when I woke up) he would enthuse about the bird selection.
I was able (thanks to a business contact in the natural history documentary business) to hook him up with some local birdwatching contacts, and I was able to observe their chats -- it was fascinating to watch the distinctive jargon of a very different subculture (the science of ornithology and the sub-ctulure of 'twitching' being overlapping, but distinct). I liked the way bird names were stripped to only that necessary to distinguish them, birders talking amongst themselves of a 'red-faced' or a 'yellow beaked' without having to specify whether it was a wren, a thrush, or a honey eater etc. And the very active grapevine and information exchange, sometimes carefully guarded, sometimes smugly proclaimed, of sighting places, some of them very nondescript to the rest of us. For example, we had to stop twice at a farily nondescript patch of spinifex in the middle of nowhere that was reputed to be a good place to see spinifex birds.
To the birdwatcher, many of the more spectacular birds that might attract the casual viewer like me, the majestic wedge tailed eagles and spectacular parrots etc, are old hat. Everyone has seen them, and even an unobservant buffoon like me will have caught a glimpse. No, the prize is rarity of sighting, so small, hard to see, obscure birds are the usual goals. We spent a lot of time in pursuit of the grey honeyeater, a small hard to see grey bird easily mistaken for others, for example.
For all that, I did see some wonderful things, both bird and non-bird. Buzzards, big imposing predators. Flocks of budgies in the wild, looking like improbably obvious living jewels until they fly into eucalyptus leaves, whereupon they vanish utterly (budgies being pretty similar in colour and perceived shape to a eucalyptus leaf). Close ups of black footed rock wallabies. Manificent gorges, hidden waterholes. And while it is strange to me that half the time while I was looking at these wonderful things my brother was peering through binoculars looking for small nondescript birds, I have no doubt that he also was incredibly happy with what he saw.
So, anyway, if I have been slow to get you an email or phone call or LJ comment or whatever over the last week or so, that is why. And then I went to see the Devils Marbles this weekend, as doctor_k_ has posted. If you are lucky, there will be a forthcoming photo essay on one of Australias tackiest tourist sites for your pleasure later in the week.