Mother Mountain: The Symphony of Birdsong (8)

Don Knowler, the Tommy Cooper of Birdwatching, interprets Wellington’s birdlife for mate Mike Ward. Pics: Rob Walls, http://robertwalls.wordpress.com/

The “Respect the Mountain” forum ( here, here, and here ) at the Hobart Town Hall last month prompted Don Knowler to return to a diary he compiled after daily rambles on Mt Wellington during the previous year. In what promises to be a momentous year in the modern history of Kunanyi, the weekly diary gives the mountain and its wildlife its own voice. All Don’s Mother Mountain columns – and much more by this superb writer – can be found under the Category, Don Knowler, here

The snows that had closed the road up Mount Wellington were still melting as the Tasmanian Tourism Industry Council renewed calls for all-weather access to the peak.

The council’s chief, Luke Martin, criticised indecision over development on the mountain, and called for the “perennial debates” about a cable car and road access to end.

“Let’s not condemn ourselves to another winter of discontent and talk and get things happening,” Mr Martin said in the Mercury. He was pictured on the summit frolicking in the snow with his two-year-old daughter Ava.

“Let’s make this the year of progress”, he went on, criticising the stewardship of the Wellington Park Management Trust. “We need a proper independent look at the management of, and tenure of, the whole site,” Mr Martin said.

The trust was in the process of preparing a submission for the Tasmanian Planning Commission about the best use of the mountain.

The strong-billed honeyeaters were using the peak as best they knew. Snow still lay on the lower slopes, not just on the peak, as I tramped the track to Sphinx Rock and I was delighted to come across a knot of birds of many species at the point where the closed wet forest on the first part of the track out of the Springs opens to glades dotted with scattered yellow gums.

It’s not uncommon on the mountain to find groups of birds. The hiker can walk for hundreds of metres and just hear the occasional green rosella or black currawong, before an explosion of birdsong and calls leads to possibly 10 species, numbering 50 individuals, moving through bush and canopy.

In this troupe I found yellow-throated, black-headed, strong-billed and crescent honeyeaters, silvereyes, Tasmanian thornbills, brown thornbills and yellow whistlers.

At the flock’s fringe, grey fantails lingered. The fantails might follow hikers in summer, in the hope that they disturb insects into flight, but at other times they are just as likely to hitch a ride with travelling honeyeaters and whistlers. The noisy and frantic actions of the species that glean the canopy also disturb insects hidden among leaves, and the fantails are always on hand to pounce on them.

Travelling and feeding in a group has another benefit for the smaller bird species. It offers protection against predators, like the feared brown and white goshawks that not so much patrol the forests, but remain hidden to plot ambush. Many pairs of eyes are better than two, and all forest birds recognise the alarm calls of others, and return the favour if required.

Within days the snows had cleared and the melt had seeped into the mountain’s water courses. Drips and trickles at first, just below the peak, but soon these were forming raging torrents on the lower slopes. The rushing water whooshed under my feet as I crossed stone slabs laid across streams along the Lenah Valley track at Sphinx Rock, tracks laid in the early days of mountain tourism in the Victorian era. The engineering had proved the test of time.

Winter may have come to the mountain, but the city far below still gripped the memory of summer, as though frightened to let it go. For several days towards the end of April the city was bathed in sunshine, giving a polish and shine to changing leaves of the trees from Europe.

One morning I had to be in town early, and I stopped in St David’s Park to admire a silver birch still coated in dew. Its golden foliage hung in cascades, falling about its silver trunk. The droplets of water sparkled, throwing back pin-pricks of light to the sun. The tree was also decorated with hanging pendants of seedpods, as though they had been placed there by hand.

The oaks and elms held out in green leaf, however, defiant against the onslaught of winter.

Business completed in the city, it was back up the mountain. Clouds had gathered there, bringing rain. As I reached the last bend before the Springs that affords a view from a lookout over Bruny Island to the south, a rainbow was painted across the sky.

Under it stood a Japanese tourist, motioning to his wife to take a picture. The rainbow arced across his head, framing him perfectly with Bruny in the background. He raised his arms to touch the rainbow’s colours and the click of the camera’s shutter recorded a rainbow and a grin.

• Respect The Mountain Applauds HCC Decision Respect The Mountain – No Cable Car tonight applauded the Hobart City Council’s decision to not grant special circumstances for the Mt. Wellington Cableway Co by extending the development zone on the pinnacle of the mountain. The decision means that the MWCC will have to adhere to the same regulations as every other development put before council. The proponent has been boasting that it has financial backers and that funding isn’t going to be an issue but the moment that some money is required to submit a Development Application, it’s asking for special favours. “This doesn’t sound like a company with money in the bank, which then leaves the question of what money has actually been sourced and how much local authorities will need to contribute?” said Respect The Mountain spokesperson Jason Turvey