Noisy yahoo of the woodlands is silent
MANY of our local birds have become scarce over the last few decades.
We are not alone in this, for the bush-birds and migratory waders are under extreme stress worldwide through habitat loss and climate change.
Two species stand out — both were once quite plentiful on the Bellarine Peninsula and in the You Yangs, and both vanished around the 1960s.
First was the grey-crowned babbler, a bird that lives in small family groups of up to a dozen individuals.
The group usually consists of one pair and the young from previous breeding seasons.
Typically their home territory is about 10ha.
To prevent the group from becoming too large and inbred, there is a movement of “surplus” individuals from one group to another.
But when these groups become separated by habitat loss, they simply die out.
This is what happened around Geelong and in many other places across Australia.
The last group that I know of was at the Wooloomanata property near the You Yangs in the early 1960s.
Grey-crowned babblers have two subspecies — one in eastern Australia, the other in the centre, north and west.
In Victoria the bird is an endangered species, having suffered the same fate statewide as it has locally.
Babblers build two types of nest, with one used mainly as their sleeping quarters and the other a place in which to raise their nestlings. Made of sticks and lined with soft material, they are football shaped.
Babblers are not strong in flight and will usually move through the bush by hopping to the top of a shrub, then gliding down to the ground.
They are noisy birds with a range of calls including a loud “yahoo” note.
The second of our locally extinct birds is the bush stonecurlew, another inhabitant of woodland areas.
Wildlife information and questions can be sent to ppescott@gmail.com