07 Little Brown Birds
About this episode
Little brown birds stop being impossible once you learn how to look at them. Bird guide Ricki Coughlan shares how bird topography can help you identify tricky Australian birds.
Episode illustration: Brown Thornbill
Resources
Book - Birds of Eucalypt Forests and Woodlands: Ecology, Conservation, Management (1985) - by Alan Keast, Hugh Ford and Denis Saunders and Harry Recher
Meet the guest
Ricki Coughlan is a bird guide and nature educator with a particular interest in the behaviour and ecology of the Acanthizids - “Little Brown Birds”. She runs courses and workshops for birders and nature lovers and facilitates the occasional citizen science project, including the Boat Harbour Shorebird Study Group. Ricki studied Ornithology at Charles Sturt University, has been a Warden at BirdLife Australia Broome Bird Observatory and an avian consultant for a number of NSW Coastal Councils.
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Kirsty: Weekend Birder was recorded on the Country of Bunurong Boonwurrung people and on the Countries of other Traditional Owners. I would like to pay my respect to Elders past and present and recognise the strength, resilience and capacity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Kirsty: Welcome to Weekend Birder, a podcast that shares birdwatching stories and advice. I'm Kirsty Costa and this episode is going to be super practical because Ricki Coughlan is here to help us level up our knowledge and skills. Here is how Ricki discovered her love of birdwatching.
Ricki: I guess we have to go back to right back to my childhood when I lived in one of the far northern suburbs of Sydney. We had the remnants of an apple orchard in our backyard and we had a creek running through the property. We had lots of bush around my school and we had little bush remnants and riparian scrub running along the creek that ran through all of our properties in our street. You would get birds in there and we would get frogs and there were platypuses living near our school. So it was a kind of place where a bit of a nature loving element would be struck up in our lives. And then my father had aviaries and in those aviaries he would keep Zebra Finches and Diamond Doves and Peaceful Doves. And we had King Quail in there. I can remember standing in those aviaries as a young child, just being surrounded by these gorgeous little birds. This just gave me a great, I guess, a great affinity and love of birds as as any child would. I had a great thing about nature. My first book was about dinosaurs. I didn't even start with the Little Golden Books, it was straight into 'What is a Dinosaur?' - that was my first book. And I was into shell collecting, fossil collecting, rock collecting and feather collecting. I guess I was around about 14-15 and I had been for some years a member of it was like a children's museum group at the Australian Museum called the Junior Explorer Club. And then that morphed as you've got a little bit more closer into teenage years into the newly formed Australian Museum Society. They were having this getaway for 5-6 days up to Brisbane Waters National Park where we were going to assist Dr. Harry WRecher, who is a great bird man. We were going to assist him in his research on pollination of banksia in Brisbane Water National Park. So we all go up there and we were camping. And I'm blabbing on about dinosaurs because this was the time when we were starting to discover that dinosaurs and birds were pretty much the same thing, that dinosaurs were endothermic and they had developed feathers, and everything that birds became was already prototyped somewhere in the dinosaur lineage. And so, you know, I'm babbling on about this. And I can remember that we had been up there pulling a lot of New Holland Honeyeaters and White-cheeked Honeyeaters out of mist nets and taking their orthometrics. And he (Dr WRecher) was banding them and we were scribing. And I mustn't have been able to shut up because I can remember him putting the New Holland Honeyeater in my hand and saying, "Look, here's how you do all this". And he showed me how to take all the orthometrics and band the bird. And I remember looking down at that bird and thinking, "I'm going to do birds". I had an interesting kind of childhood, I was teenager in the 1970s and I got down in the Royal National Park a lot. And so it was birds and it was reptiles and it was just being out in the bush and but come around about 1990 and I was 21 years of age, I was going to resolve a problem that I'd been growing up with all my life. And this was I was born transgender. So I thought, "Well, you know, now's the time. I'm at the legal age now. I can do something about this". So I went off and did all of those things that you do, and that kind of derailed my life a bit. I found myself all of a sudden doing a lot more around the fitness industry and I got into the fitness industry. So I'm working in the fitness industry and became an athlete and went on to have an athletics career. In the middle of that, I got outed and this became like a whole global thing, this story about, "We've got a person who's had a sex change running in women's sport" but that all worked out very well. And the people who run track and field or athletics in Australia were very good. And we went down to the Australian Institute of Sport, did a lot of tests and they said, "Well, you know, they are pretty much the same as everyone else". So on I went.
Kirsty: After picking up her binoculars again in the late 1990s, Ricki's birdwatching future was sealed by a chance encounter with a Scottish man during a walk in Royal National Park on Dharawal Country in Sydney. This random stranger was searching for lyrebirds and asked for Ricki's help.
Ricki: Some reason, they were having trouble finding them. And then we see one that runs across a trail and then up a creek. And so we decide we're going to go after it. So we're clambering along and jumping along boulders up the middle of this creek and then we come to a spot where the creek opens into a big pool. There's a lovely big log across and a lyrebird is crossing the log. We hunker down and we watch this bird do the whole thing. It goes right into the whole practice display routine, doing that beautiful veil tail thing and jumping up and down and the plank call, and what we now call the Star Wars gun, and a lot of mimicry. And this guy is Scottish. He's just like going, "Wow! This is the best day of my life!". And I said to him, "Oh, look, it'll get better if you look to your left". And he looks to his left and there's this little puggle, quite a young echidna, right next to him sort of snuffling around and trying to bury itself in insufficient soil and leaf litter beside him. And he was just gobsmacked. And so he went back to Scotland and told all his friends. And pretty soon I had quite the birdwatching tour business going and people coming over from England to come and see lyrebirds and try and track down a puggle I guess.
Kirsty: Fast forward to the early 2000s and Ricki finally fulfilled her childhood dream of going to university to study birds, which she did at Charles Sturt University. Midway through her studies, Ricki was offered a role as a warden at the Broome Bird Observatory on Yawuru Country in Western Australia.
Ricki: Never have I been more 'me' than when I was at Broome. There was the whole thing was birds, the whole thing was nature, and you could just totally embrace it and just be the bird person that I was and that I know you also are (as most of the people who are listening are just bird people). And you could go up there and just totally embrace that. But I had to come back and finish my university. So I came back to Sydney and hung out my shingle as a nature educator and avian consultant.
Kirsty: Ricki runs courses and workshops for birdwatchers and she is an absolute whiz at helping people identify little brown birds that are also known as LBBs. You might also hear birdwatchers call them little brown jobs or LBJs.
Ricki: Little brown birds are the most prominent of the birds. When you walk through any forest or woodland on the East Coast of Australia, and even getting out into the outback among some of the woodlands and even into the sparse areas, it's little brown birds that are quite prominent still. I think when we talk about little brown birds, we're talking about thornbills, gerygones and your scrub wrens, the ones that are most commonly associated with this. There are others amongst the group as well. What I find particularly fascinating is that we've got all these different species that all look so much alike, all living side-by-side or generally many of them living side-by-side. And how they do this is quite fascinating. It's a form of resource partitioning, which means finding their own niche in a fashion that lets them live side-by-side but gain any advantages of living together. It's very easy to see this.
Ricki: If we look at a group of shorebirds, you can see them walking across a mudflat. There's all different lengths and shapes of bills going on and they're all living side-by-side, enjoying the benefit of a big flock when there's predators around. But at the same time, they can be shoulder to shoulder, taking slightly different prey in slightly different ways. So it's very caring and sharing and no one is competing with each other. This is very valuable in a forest for little brown birds. When you've got marauding gulls, hawks and sparrowhawks, even other species, you know, currawongs can be in there. There's a lot of predatory birds that will take these small birds. So being in numbers, there is an advantage to that. And I imagine there's other advantages of numbers for these birds. Each of them will forage at a slightly different level in slightly different ways. In this way, nothing is competing with each other and how they live their lives. How they do this is quite fascinating to me and how the moments and ways that these birds have evolved and this speciation or this creation of new species has taken place is just so fascinating to me.
Kirsty: Ricki says that all beginners should learn 'bird topography', which is basically understanding the key features of a bird. Bird topography looks at the bird's feathers, its head, beak, wings, legs and feet. And it also involves the much smaller details, like its 'lore', which is the area between its eyes and its nostrils. This is where binocular skills are really important and you can get an introduction to binoculars in Episode Five with Anthony Overs. Here's more binocular advice from Ricki.
Ricki: Make sure that your binoculars are pre focused. We know in the environment that we're in where we're seeing most of our birds. So I find it really useful when I'm walking along a trail to every now and again just make sure my binoculars are focused on whatever distance they need to be, depending on the habitat and the conditions and the birds I'm looking at or looking for. And so often that's around about ten metres, maybe a little less. So walking through a forest, as soon as I see a bird the focus is going to be practically on it or so close to it. And then you might only see a little bit of it and then a little blob and you'll get a little bit more and a little bit of a picture will develop and you might not get much more than that. But once you know the various the code for cracking the little brown birds, that's all you're going to need because for most of them you only need to know one thing. What's the eye color? What's do they have a fronds? Have they got striations in one spot or another? Eyebrows. If it's got a moustache, you know it's a White-browed Scrubwren straight away. You might only see a little shoulder of something bobbing around in amongst the ferns and you'll just get those little sergeant stripes on the shoulder. And you know you've got a White-browed Scrubwren or technically, they are little chevrons on the bird's 'alula' and you can go and look that up if you're just sort of starting out with your birds. But that produces these little sergeant stripes on what we would call the shoulders of the White-browed Scrubwren. But even seeing a little moustache on it is a dead giveaway. So, yeah, learning those kind of things, like seeing, for instance your Brown Thornbill with those heavy striations on that paler breast. A lot of people struggle when they see a Striated Thornbill because it's suddenly they're seeing these striations again.
Kirsty: Let me quickly jump in here and explain what striations are. Basically, they are bands of color usually occurring in parallel lines, kind of like irregular stripes. Sometimes they can be quite bold and thick, other times they can be quite fine and thin. Sometimes they even look like V shapes like they do on the Striated Thornbill. Okay, back to you, Ricki.
Ricki: And you've just got to learn how these (striations) are finer. And they're also lighter and they're across the face and even onto their cap. And they've got a little copper cap when you see it in the right light. Whereas the Brown Thornbill has a little browny wash to the fronds or forehead. The thing you've got to watch for is if you see a little Striated Thornbill and it's got to dew on it or it's been raining, those striations will start to look pretty big like a Brown Thornbill. So always beware of the damp bird! So it's kind of like that - you learn one or two features. And I have a little book on the subject. In that, the bird is broken down by terminal tail bands or little bands on the end of the tail or eyebrows, or these kind of features that you can quickly group together and say, "This is one or the other". And it comes down to usually one one diagnostic field mark, and sometimes two, to be able to pick your little brown bird. So start gradually and just build your bank of knowledge on them but always begin by learning the topography of the bird.
Kirsty: As a beginner birdwatcher, I've tried to identify a bird by the colour of its feathers or the color of its eye. When it comes to little brown birds though, this is definitely not the best method. Ricki has a great explanation about why.
Ricki: I know we often look at the the back of the bird because a lot of these birds we call "brown", they do seem brown in certain lights and in other lights all of a sudden they look more olive or yellow or buff and cream. And it's and this can be a problem with the eyes as well because in a rainforest, where a lot of these birds are congregating in that light, they eye can look quite red out in the sunlight. It becomes a black eye in the forest. And a white eye might not seem so easy either. Sometimes eye size is good, like with the Brown Thornbill and Striated Thornbill, which is the curse of so many birders. The Brown Thornbill has this really big eye, and I think it's described by Danny Rogers in The Australian Bird Guide as "cute". And I guess that's a fairly new scientific term but it is a big cute eye, the impression is cute. Then you see, say, a Large-billed Scrubwren. With that bird, you can definitely pick by the fact that it's just a plainest bird in the forest. So it's practically one of my favorite birds, but it is just the plainest bird. But just as this bill is, as soon as you see that bill, you think this is nothing else - this is a Large-billed Scrubwren.
Kirsty: There are lots of binocular brands out there. Ricki wants to tell us about her favorite pair.
Ricki: My favorite binoculars are the Leica 10x42. My reason for that is that for the money you get a lifetime of fantastic viewing with as good of you as you're mostly ever going to need. They're very sharp and they have minimal color aberration. You do get what we call a little bit of fringing in certain light conditions with these binoculars. So if you're looking at a heron with a gray, slightly cloudy background or a buzzard sitting on the top of a tree with a gray sky behind that, you will get that little bit of that purplish outline on it. And that is about as flawed as they get. Otherwise, these binoculars can give you a lifetime of birdwatching satisfaction.
Kirsty: Ricki's favorite bird book is 'The Australian Bird Guide'.
Ricki: It is very complete in its descriptions. It also has wonderful hints and notes and stories about birding and birds, and it's very comprehensive. It covers everything really well. Most of what you're going to want to know about birds except for their calls, which for that I go to eBird. Recently, what's come out is the 'Compact Australian Bird Guide' by the same team. And this is fantastic and it's really well devised if you want to have something to throw into your backpack or keep in the glovebox of the car. The Compact Australian Bird Guide is super lightweight. You can hold it in one hand. It brings across all the wonderful illustrations from the Australian Bird Guide into this book with, I think, improved maps and just simplifying the text and sticking to all the basic birds (not getting into things that are offshore or vagrants or anything like that). And one of the things I really like about this field guide, both these field guides, is the illustrations. They're very diagnostic. They don't try to be too artistic because when you look at a bird, you're looking for a series of diagnostic features - that's very prominent in the illustrations in these books so they're fantastic. Another favourite of mine is 'Where Song Began' by Tim Lowe. And this is a tour de force of the story of Australian birds. I just love it. He is a true raconteur of the world of nature. It is a great read, a gripping read, and I think everyone should who loves birds should have a copy of this book. And finally, 'Birds of Eucalypt Forests and Woodlands: Their Ecology, Conservation and Management' by Keast, Wrecher, Ford and Sanders. And of course, Wrecher is the Harry Wrecher who many years ago put the New Holland honeyeater in my hand. And this is a fantastic book for anyone who just loves getting out into the woodlands of Australia and birding. It is basically a collection of papers, research papers, that have been sort of rejigged a little bit to work into more of a book context and make them a little more accessible for the ordinary mortal who wants to learn a little bit more about the stories and the ecologies and the behaviours of Australian birds.
Kirsty: Links to the books that Ricki mentioned can be found in the notes for this episode. Hey, how awesome was that? Thank you to Ricki for taking the time to share her incredible stories and knowledge. You can find out more about Ricki and other Weekend Birder guests by visiting our website weekendbirder.com. You can also share your tips for watching and listening and identifying little brown birds on your favorite social media platform - just search for @birdpod and you will find us there.
