ON THE WING

The end of summer, the dimming of the light, does not approach slowly as might be imagined. It also comes with a chilly blast of wind at the start or end of a sunny day.

It usually also arrives in silence. The birds stop singing, reading signals that summer is on the wane. This year, however, autumn arrived in a different way – hardhead ducks turned up earlier than usual on the two reservoirs of the Waterworks Reserve.

In autumn, the woodland and forest birds visiting from the mainland make way for domestic migrants moving from higher ground. But this movement is not confined to leaf and canopy. Out on the lakes of the reserve, the resident coots and pacific black and wood ducks are joined by arrivals who have bred in the sheltered freshwater bays of the upper Derwent and Huon rivers, or high country billabongs and lakes.

These include the hardheads, also called white-eyed ducks. It was a surprise to find them on February 25, three days before the end of summer. On my calendar, signified by the portents of nature and not the pages of a diary, it was official: summer was over and it was time to prepare for the slow and inevitable slide into winter.

All the same, it was nice to see the hardheads. They are one of the most elegant of Tasmania’s duck species but they carry their beauty in a subtle way. You see none of the striking russet and bronze plumage found in the chestnut teal, or the steel-blue shimmering hue of the male shoveller.

The hardheads are clothed in brown overall, slightly mottled on the wings and underbody, with a head of chocolate brown. In fact, they could almost be described as an assorted mix in a tray of chocolate: dark mocca on the head, milk on the breast. This is all set off by sparkling white eyes and a flash of white feathers under the tail.

We classify ducks as grazers, dabblers or divers. The wood ducks are grazers, the black dabblers and the hardheads fall into the third category – not diving for fish but for vegetation on the lake or sea floor, out of reach of other ducks.

While I watched three hardheads at the reserve, they dived without hardly a ripple. Along with aquatic plants, they also feed on crustaceans and other water life. The hardhead is wholly protected in Tasmania and so is not included in the five species that can be hunted during the duck-hunting season, which opened this month.

Away from the guns, the black and wood ducks form a happy community at the reserve. Each year, awaiting the return of the hardheads, I look for the other wildfowl so prized by hunters – but I’ve never been able to add grey and chestnut teals and the mountain duck to my Waterworks checklist.