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| "Crimson Chat." by Laurie R B is licensed
under CC BY-SA 2.0 |
October Bird of the Month: the Crimson Chat
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| Image courtesy Wayne Weatherstone |
This is number 10 of a 12 part series in which we take a bird recorded in Gladstone Weatherstone's notebook between 1962 and 1981, see if anything is different today and, if so, try to explain why.
Gladstone was an expert amateur naturalist who lived on Lyndfield Park near Gunning from 1941 until 1996.
1969: A Unusual Year
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| Image: Brett Donald, Own Work CC BY- SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. |
The year was also noteworthy for the rare sighting of an Owlet Nightjar and the first-ever visit by an Olive-backed Oriole. More ominously, one of the first portents of climate change appeared.
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| Crimson Chat (C)Trevor Bullock 2012 Birdlife Photography |
This harbinger of the heating climate all too apparent to us now was the arrival of a pair of Crimson Chats. Gladstone saw and photographed them on 19 October.
He noted "These birds have not been recorded here before and were well out of their normal range. Their beautiful crimson colouring – particularly on the male bird – makes them amongst the most colourful species".
The Rare Visitor
Our bird of the month is a rare visitor to the Upper Lachlan Shire. Gladstone saw it only one more time over his many years at Lyndfield Park. I live within sight of Gladstone's former property and, like him, have seen them just twice in twenty years. It is likely we, and our successors even more so, will become much more familiar with Crimson Chats in the future.
Artist and her Subjects Sacrificed for Science?
Gladstone was far from the first to be entranced by the sight of this bird. The Crimson Chat Epthianura tricolor was scientifically described and named by John Gould in 1838. Gould, famed for his magnificent seven-volume The Birds of Australia, was dazzled by the bird when he first saw it. A driven and single-minded scientific collector, he just had to have it. His diary tells us "As may be supposed, the sight of a bird of such beauty, and which moreover was entirely new to me, excited so strong a desire to possess it that scarcely a moment elapsed before it was dead in my hand."
Pictured right: John Gould, by Thomas Herbert Maguire, printed by M & N Hanhart; lithograph, 1849. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=497987
Gould and his wife Elizabeth, accompanied by a small party of naturalists and artists, were in Australia from 1838 to 1840. They gathered an enormous collection of eggs, skins and whole bodies preserved in spirits. Destroying that which you love was necessary for science. Gould did not hold back on this. Elizabeth wrote to her mother soon after they arrived in Australia. She reported that her husband had "already shown himself a great enemy to the feathered tribe, having shot a great many beautiful birds and robbed various others of their nests and eggs".
Unlike her husband, Elizabeth was an accomplished artist. He relied heavily on her skills to provide lots of the illustrations in his many voluminous publications. One biographer thinks Elizabeth's heavy professional workload, combined with the draining domestic burden that came with having borne eight children, contributed to her early death.
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| Oil portrait of Elizabeth Gould [1840-184-] holding an Australian cockatiel (Nymphicus hollandicus). Painted after her death by an unknown artist. http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-150672913/view |
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| This painting of Crimson Chats was done by Elizabeth Gould for John Gould's Birds of Australia. Digitally enhanced by httpswww.rawpixel.com |
John Gould's name lives on in his contribution to natural science as well as in Australia's Gould League. Founded in 1919 as the Gould League of Bird Lovers, this organisation worked to discourage the taking of eggs and nests from the wild. Its mainly school-based campaigns did much to change our behaviour for the better. More recently the League has also introduced programs on recycling, environmental education and agricultural sustainability.
The Crimson Chat
These very bright and attractive chats like arid and semi-arid habitats. Mostly, they favour open shrubland, especially where Acacia or Eucalypts species dominate. They also like the edges of salt lakes and dunes as well as agricultural land and roadsides. Usually, they are summer visitors to southern Australia although, as we shall see, there are exceptions to this.
Unlike most small birds, the chat walks rather than hops. As Gladstone noted, their magnificent crimson colouring makes them a delight to see. These nomadic and gregarious birds travel and breed in flocks of various sizes. They feed mainly on the ground but also perch in low bushes and reeds.
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| Crimson Chat feeding fledgling (C)Linda Unwin 2019 birdlifephotography.org.au |
Crimson Chats will breed outside their regular season if conditions allow. These birds build a small, round, cup-shaped nest constructed of grass, twigs or plant stems in low shrubs close to the ground. They sometimes nest communally or with other species. The young are fed and guarded by both parents.
In 1935 A M Lea and J T Gray analysed the stomach contents of many bird species. The two researchers found that Crimson Chats subsisted on insects (both destructive and beneficial), weevils, caterpillars, spiders, small grasshoppers, ants and seeds. As they are members of the Meliphagidae or honeyeater family, they have brush-tipped tongues which enable them to take nectar from flowers as well.
What Brought the Crimson Chat to Lyndfield Park?
Why did they turn up near Gunning in 1969? They are highly nomadic and will breed outside their regular breeding season (from July/August until November/December) if conditions allow. They seem to turn up after recent rainfall in places where they are known to be intermittent visitors. At 855.5mls, it was a pretty good year for rain in the Gunning area. So, perhaps they were attracted to idyllic 1969 Gunning with its mild winter and lovely rainfall.
Experts are not sure why and how they choose to journey to particular places outside their regular haunts. Is it push that compels them to leave or pull that attracts them to a new location? Westerly winds had been blowing fiercely for days on both times I saw them. My first thought was that these very unusual visitors had been carried, perhaps involuntarily, to our area. Alternatively, they could have been refugees leaving their homes because food and shelter had become scarce.
An ABC Rural report in November last year said that the prolonged drought in the centre of the country had corresponded with increased sightings of inland birds in south-east Australia. Birdlife Australia editor Sean Dooley told the ABC “All of these desert birds, essentially, have just been driven out from the inland because there's no water, no food."
Will the Crimson Chat Be Back?
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| Image courtesy Geoffrey Dabb and Canberra Ornithologists Group |
Whatever motivated these chats to visit the Gunning district when both Gladstone and I saw them, they did not stay. It may well be that their visits will become more frequent in the future. Indeed, they may be permanent residents as our climate heats up.
By 2050, unless the world changes
course, our regional weather is predicted to become semi-arid – hotter and with
more variable rainfall. We will resemble
places like Griffith today – just the sort of localities Crimson Chats
like. And the inland areas they live in
now will be less hospitable for them. It
seems likely Crimson Chats may well become more familiar to people in Gunning
then.
A depressing outlook? It certainly is. Let's hope that humanity succeeds in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions in time to avert a catastrophe. Whatever happens globally, we can take some heart from the environmental progress we see locally. More land managers are revegetating their properties and taking up sustainable farming practices. Landcare pioneers have shown how beneficial this has been. Well treed properties will be better able to withstand the hotter future that may come. While the Gunning district of 2050 will be far from idyllic, it can still be liveable and manageable if there is widespread take-up of the sustainable practices we know can make the landscape more resilient.
Thank You
Thank you to:
• Nicki Taws (Program Specialist – Ecologist, Greening Australia);
• Dr Tony Saunders (ornithologist and President of the Crookwell Native Flora and Fauna Club);
• Mark Clayton (former Senior Technical Officer, CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology).
Mark, Tony and Nicki review drafts of these articles before publication. I really appreciate their help.
Thank you also to John Weatherstone for providing a transcription of Gladstone's Notebook and fielding lots of follow up questions about Gladstone related matters.
Further Information
Lyndfield Park; looking back moving forward. John Weatherstone 2003 tells the story of Gladstone's former property as it moved from conventional to restorative farming.
Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture – A New Earth. Charles Massy, 2017. A book about regenerative agriculture, including a complete chapter on Lyndfield Park.
You can obtain a short biography of Gladstone Weatherstone as a PDF file by emailing bobgunninghistoryblog@gmail.com.
References
The primary sources used in writing this article were:
"The Australian Bird Guide" Peter Menkhorst et al. CSIRO Publishing
"Birds of the Upper Lachlan Shire" Dr Tony Saunders
“The Ruling Passion of John Gould: A biography of the bird man. Isabella Tree. Barrie and Jenkins 1991
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