ON THE WING

Birds do not gamble in the lottery of life. Every move is calculated to ensure survival for such seemingly frail and vulnerable creatures in an often hostile world.

The certainties of bird behaviour have certainly been put to the test, however, by a family of Tasmanian native-hens that have made their home in the grounds of the Wrest Point Casino on Sandy Bay Rd.

Native-hens (pictured) are usually found in open country, more often than not in field and paddock. The closest they come to central Hobart is along the watercourses penetrating the city, and the banks of the Sandy Bay and Hobart rivulets.

Native-hens are flightless, so the rivulets and their grassy margins provide suitable avenues for their movements. But the grounds of the Wrest Point Casino? It poses the questions of how they got there and why they came. How could these insect and seed-eaters find sustenance here?

I saw three native-hens when I visited the site, a female being courted by two males, although there could be more birds in this group. Native-hens form a matriarchal society, in which eager young males often pay attention to a lone female.

To reach the casino grounds, the native-hens would have had to cross Sandy Bay Rd, or they could possibly have “migrated “along the coast from more open ground at upper Sandy Bay. All the same, they would have had to cross a busy road, perhaps not such a problem for these fast-running birds, which are also known as “turbo-chooks”.

Certainly, the native-hens in the search for new hunting grounds were prepared to throw caution to the wind. Gamblers after all, the chance of a flutter for a flightless bird might have been too temping to resist.