*Picture of a fan-tailed cuckoo (with hairy caterpillar in beak) from the tassiebirds blogspot, HERE
The “Respect the Mountain” forum ( here, here, and here ) at the Hobart Town Hall earlier this year 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 summer song of the fan-tailed cuckoo rang out across the forest below the Springs, resonant and strong. The visitor was announcing its defiant arrival in the face of blizzard and snow and I felt like writing a letter to The Times.
I hadn’t expected the second song of summer so soon after hearing the striated pardalote, I hadn’t expected much at all, especially not new arrivals when I set out that morning. There had been a heavy snowfall overnight and I was not going to attempt to get to the summit. The road was closed anyway. So I pottered about, slipping and sliding on tracks radiating from the Springs, looking for pink robins in the snow – a marvellous sight – more than anything else.
I had been thinking that in bad weather the birds wouldn’t move and there was this cuckoo contradicting me. What’s more, I did not just hear it, but saw the species. A magnificent male sporting a plumage that is blue-grey on the back and pink on the breast. He sat upright on a bare branch, looking about him, his barred tail trailing below. It was not fan-shaped as the name of the species suggests, but straight and narrow, keeping the bird balanced as he swung his head about him.
Perhaps he was just getting his bearings, at the same time letting females know that he was in the neighbourhood, if any had arrived on the same winds from the north.
And soon there would be what we in the human world consider evil intent. He would be scouting the eucalypts and wattles for flame robin nests, looking for surrogate parents for his offspring.
The fan-tailed cuckoo preys on a range of nesting species but from my observations over the years they tend to concentrate on flame robins in the areas where I walk, namely from the Springs along the Lenah Valley track. Experience has shown over the eons that flame robins make good cuckoo parents.
The cuckoo of Europe also chooses its surrogate prey carefully. Research in eastern England has shown that cuckoos that prey on the reed warblers common in this part of Britain produce eggs with the same colouring as the host species.
I look at pictures of the speckled eggs of the flame robin, largely white with small brown spots, and wonder if the fan-tailed cuckoos of the mountain produce eggs the same colour. And when I check, I see there is no need. The cuckoo eggs are remarkably similar.
The blizzard overnight and in the early morning of August 26 had reached as far down the mountain as Fern Tree and next day the Mercury again carried a picture of tourists revelling in the snow at the Springs. And there were calls once more for a cable car to guarantee year-round access to the summit.
Amid the clamour for the cable car, and the adverse weather that coated snow on the mountain slopes, the Mount Wellington Management Trust released a revised management plan for its domain. Clearly, the plan had come in response to the growing campaign for development. Mount Wellington, as the then Opposition leader Will Hodgman noted, was Tasmania’s third most popular tourist destination and tourists needed more than the basic facilities that existed at present.
The draft plan – issued for public review and comment – would lift the outright ban on commercial development on the summit. The chairwoman of the trust, Christina Mucha, was quoted by the ABC as saying any sensitive and appropriate development proposals would be judged on merit.
Meanwhile, Hodgman said he planned to introduce legislation in parliament to remove the trust’s power of veto, to reduce what he described as “green and red tape” for potential investors. In his challenge to the Labor/Green coalition government, he said this would speed up projects. At the same time cable-car campaigner Adrian Bold saw the trust’s draft plan as the green light for his project. He said he was confident of getting enough investor support to be operating the cable car within two years.
The clock was ticking, in both man and nature’s world.
There was still snow on the mountain but no one could doubt spring was on the way. During the last week of winter the call of the cuckoo became more and more persistent. I counted three or four calling cuckoos on the mountain most days, and listened for the other cuckoo arrivals, the pallid and shining and horsfield’s bronze-cuckoos but they were yet to arrive.
We all have our harbingers of spring. I might hear the striated pardalotes and fan-tailed cuckoo first, but spring has not arrived until I see the welcome swallow. It’s
the only swallow to visit Tasmania, along with a family member, the tree martin.
My obsession with migrants, and especially recording the first of the swallows, led me to the Waterworks again. This is where I would pick up swallows more easily, flying across the wide expanse of water and the grassy tops to the reservoir walls.
On the last day of winter, before I left the mountain, I paused in the rock hut at the Springs to warm myself by the fire burning there. As I was leaving, I put on a big log to provide warmth for anyone who would follow. A school bus soon arrived, spilling out excited children into the snow. Before going on their adventure, under snow-coated trees dripping with both snow flakes and the call of the cuckoo, I saw the kids dashing into the hut, to the promise of flames.
