19 River Birds
About this episode
A river can tell you a lot about the birds living around it. John Forrester and Charlotte Williamson from the Werribee River Association share river birds, revegetation and birdwatching along the Werribee River.
Episode illustration: White-faced Heron
John Forrester joined the Werribee River Association after moving to Werribee in the 1980s. He was appointed as the Werribee Riverkeeper in 2013 and his role is speak up for the river using action, advocacy and education. One of John’s responsibilities is to conduct bird surveys where revegetation has been undertaken in order to see if bird numbers have increased.
Charlotte Williamson grew up in a small farming community, surrounded by woodlands and wildlife, and with many pets. This love of nature has stayed with her, and she has been fortunate to move into a career that involves working in the great outdoors. Charlotte has been teaching environmental education programs for fifteen years and is the Werribee River Association’s Education Manager.
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Kirsty: Spending time on rivers is central to many Aboriginal cultures. There are thousands of years of memories on the banks of rivers around Australia. I would like to pay my respect to Elders past and present and thank them for the many ways that they care for Country.
Kirsty: Welcome to Weekend Birder podcast - I'm your host Kirsty Costa. Rivers are lifelines. They support people, plants, birds and animals. Today we are going to find out about the birds of the Werribee River in Victoria and you'll be able to use what you learn to explore and appreciate your local waterways. Let's start off by meeting John Forrester and Charlotte Williamson from the Werribee River Association. Here is how they both became interested in birds.
John: I grew up in Warrnambool and it was part of the terrain that I had lots of fun on there, along the beach or in the bush or up the river. The two rivers that I came into contact with, a whole range of mother nature. And so I've continued that through my life really. And when I went through schooling as a teacher, I always remained interested in it right from the Gould League days, which was an organisation back in the day that was promoting bird loving and enjoyment. I continued that passion for birds until, well, till the present day. It particularly became a practical thing and when I joined BirdLife in the late 1990s, BirdLife Australia that is, and then working with the Werribee River Association as a volunteer for over twenty odd years. We looked habitat and saw birds declining in number and variety and species and also the introduction of other species coming in. And I've just continued it both as a love internally for me, passionately in my heart and also officially.
Charlotte: My family were keen birdwatchers and we were surrounded by woodland where I lived. And most weekends we'd walk in the nearby forest listening for birds and looking at the tracks and signs they left behind (like owl pellets). And when we visited my great aunt, she backed on to a national park, and she'd sit with me at her kitchen window where she fed a lot of birds and tell me the names of the birds and their habits. And I remember balancing these huge binoculars that she had and trying to focus on the birds through those. And that really just instilled a love of watching nature and observing it.
Kirsty: John and Charlotte are part of the Werribee River Association. Charlotte is here to tell us a bit more about this important river which flows through the Countries of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Wautharong, Wadawurrung, Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples.
Charlotte: The Werribee River begins in the Wombat State Forest near Daylesford. It winds south to Ballan through the Pentland Hills and the magnificent Werribee Gorge State Park, and then flows east past Bacchus Marsh. The River widens here as it's joined by the Lerderderg River and loops around Hopetoun Park in a deep valley. And after Oxford and Melton, the river broadens at the melting down, which forms a large recreational water body. And below here it's met by Toolern Creek before descending in a southerly meander past Eynesbury through Cobbledicks Ford and into the urban region of Melbourne's western suburbs in Wyndham City. The River continues through beautiful parks and wooded trails over the diversion weir, passing the Werribee Open Range Zoo and the Werribee Mansion, becoming an estuary below the bluestone ford and entering Port Phillip Bay at Werribee South. The River flows for around 110 kilometres through different landscapes and supports a huge range of plants and creatures throughout its length. The water harvested from the river is important for irrigation of market gardens and food production in this region. Water is life and without it none of us would exist. Water connects all life forms, enables our waterways to thrive and flourish and builds the food webs that provide sustenance for us all.
Kirsty: You might be used to seeing the Earth divided into countries on a map. Another way to understand the Earth is by looking at bioregions. Bioregions are areas that have similar climates and often similar physical features. This often leads to similar types of animals and plants being able to live there. Australia has seven types of bioregions and John says that understanding bioregions helps us also understand birds.
John: You have what is called a part of the Otway Plain down on the delta part of the Werribee River, say from Tarneit down to the sea. And it's there that you run into things like the migratory species that are from overseas. They're really quite famous through the home they make in our summer at the Western Treatment Plant and other wetlands along the bay. Then as you leave the coast and you leave the migratory birds alone there for a while, you can come up on the River itself through the Wyndham Municipality. There's a magnificent spread of Riparian River Red Gums, which have just been announced to be Australia's leading tree I understand. Voted for that. Yes, I voted for that. So that was great within those trees. And as they bought a farmland and even some of the urban areas, you'll find quite a range of bushland birds. So this is where you start finding some of the more inland species. Then as you move further north of Werribee, you enter the real grassland or the plains areas of the catchment and it's here you'll find some of the grassland birds too, the Pipits and bushlarks and others like that, as well as some of the bush birds still existing along the River channel.
John: You'll find a lot of bush birds again reappearing in places like Eynesbury, where the Grey Box forest still exists. It once was the lowest in the state (I mean the furthest south Grey Box country). Then you start entering the foothills of the Great Dividing Range and you're heading up in towards the Wombat Forest. So you're starting to get a few other species such as Flame Robins, Golden Whistlers and others, which do fly down to the Werribee end of the Werribee River or the Wyndham area in our summer again. So there's a couple of migratory species both from overseas and then as you get inland you find locally migratory species such as the Golden Whistler and others that move up and down the river. So there's quite a variety of birds in the area and that just about encompasses those three main biodiversity areas and the different birds that live in each of those zones.
Kirsty: Next time you're out birdwatching, you could learn more about the area that you're in by Googling its bioregion to help. I've put some website links in the notes for this episode. Weekend Birder guests like John are really helping us understand bird migration. There are birds that fly from one end of the world to the other, like the plovers that Kristal talked about in Episode 13. These international travellers live at the end of Werribee River, closer to the sea. Other birds will fly across smaller areas like the Yellow-faced Honeyeaters that Carol talked about in Episode 14 that fly from the coast to the mountains of New South Wales. And John just mentioned that Golden Whistlers travel up and down the Werribee River. With so many bioregions and bird travellers, the Werribee River is really important. The Werribee River Association was formed in 1981 to support communities to connect and protect this waterway, and John is the official Werribee Riverkeeper.
John: The Werribee Riverkeeper's role is fairly easily summed up in just a few words, and that's basically to provide clean, flowing water to a river. So if we say the river is an artery (as other people have said in the past) of the land, then it's very vital that we keep those arteries flowing well. So my work covers things like water quality and water flow, condition of the river itself, vegetation both within the stream and alongside the stream and out to the environs, each side of it. My work relates to things like management of the waterway, management of the land, and then goes further upwards. If you like to talk about state policies, local municipality strategies and plans and so forth. So there's a whole range of practical and advocacy and other political type decisions to be involved with as we work forward to having a better Werribee River and a better future for the birds in Australia. You can be a Riverkeeper without too many problems. You can either you can do one major thing and that's what we have done. We play host to the Werribee Riverkeeper role. The reason I say it that way is that we actually have a licence to manage the Werribee Riverkeeper role and that licence is attained by paying a simple fee each year to what's called the Waterkeeper Alliance in the United States. Why are we going over there? Well, they were the first organisation across the world for the community to actively get involved with the condition of their waterways. And so people in the 1960s in United States around the Hudson River at New York were upset by the way the river was being mistreated, pollutants and other things being poured into that by factories and ruining their fisheries in the Hudson River, which were quite important to a number of local fisheries. Their effect and the work that they've done over the years and their gaining of power and knowledge and information and clout has transferred across to Australia where a few people are Waterkeepers.
John: So I'm a Riverkeeper, but you can have a Streamkeeper, Baykeeper and so on. And in fact Melbourne has a Port Phillip Baykeeper in the person of Neil Blake for the Ecocentre in St Kilda. So we are a professional organisation like the Ecocentre and that we are moving forward on this stuff because the government, politicians bureaucracy are not going to solve the problems we have in front of us and the community has to get up on its back legs and speak up. We set the Werribee River Association up to become professional, as part of a succession plan, but also to ensure the community has a life and a say in keeping water clean and safe biodiversity habitat forever.
Kirsty: Charlotte's role as Education Manager with the Werribee River Association is to connect people to nature and provide education experiences to help them learn more about the River.
Charlotte: So we run guided walks and workshops and various activities and attend events to get people to connect with their local natural environment and appreciate what they have in their backyard and ways that we can work together for that. So we work with schools and community and corporate groups and our wonderful partner organisations to share our knowledge of the amazing local environment and how we can all protect it into the future and ensuring good water quality for the health of the River and its inhabitants. We're very lucky in the Werribee River catchment to have so many special places still and to have platypus in an area that's quite urbanised and to have this huge array, as I mentioned, of the migratory birds and so many diverse ecosystems throughout that we can appreciate. And anyone can go down to the River and do some birdwatching and just really engage with nature and feel like they're a million miles away from the freeway or built up busy city areas. Just enjoy being in nature.
Kirsty: One of Charlotte's favorite Werribee River birds is the White-faced Heron. BirdLife Australia says that this incredible bird is one of the most commonly seen herons in Australia. They can be found anywhere where there's water, from mudflats and coastal reefs to wetlands and grasslands and gardens. They also live in Indonesia, New Guinea, New Caledonia and New Zealand.
Charlotte: A lot of people will be familiar with them. They're very slender, elegant birds. They stand around 68 centimetres tall. They have sleek grey feathers. During breeding season, those feathers get quite prominent. So in the males they have this sort of rough of feathers around their neck. They have wide wings in flight, a white face and upper neck, and they fold that neck back during flights. They tuck it right in and just see these long wings outstretched and yellow eyes and legs so they stalk their prey at the water's edge, stepping on long legs through the shallows to snatch up fish and amphibians. And they'll also snack on insects and feed on land. I've seen one in a park just snapping away at insects, which is really special to watch, and they're quite common along estuarine and freshwater areas. You'll even see them feeding in flooded ditches beside roads and they tend to be solitary or just move in pairs. They tuck their long neck back and they'll often make a loud, guttural call as they approach their nests. And I discovered what they're doing there is they make a big entrance to a decoy tree, so they make a lot of noise, approach a tree, and then they'll very quietly hop over to the real tree where the nest is so that any predators don't know which one they're nesting in, which is really clever.
Charlotte: I've been fortunate to have nesting herons in my yard for years, even though I'm about a kilometer from the Barwon River, which flows through Geelong. The herons raise their chicks in a woven nest made of gathered sticks in the fork branch of a large tree. And unfortunately for our neighbour this was directly above where they parked their car, which they soon moved. Many times a day we'd see the parent birds taking turns to fly to the river and return with food for the two or three chicks. We could sit on a house and watch them out of the front window. And then when the birds were ready to fledge, these near adults, really fluffy chicks were learning to fly around our backyard. They were practising short flights between the trees and the neighbouring TV antenna. That was just really special to watch that whole life cycle and see them so close and just be able to sort of observe them without disturbing them. By encouraging birds to visit our backyards, by having native plants and trees, we benefit from the natural insect control and pollination. All those benefits of birds and just the joy of seeing these beautiful creatures up close as they go about their everyday lives.
Kirsty: One of John's favourite Werribee River birds is the Crested Shrike-tit. This cool looking bird is found in eucalyptus forests, rainforests, parks, gardens and waterways of mainland Australia. John loves it for many reasons, especially because it's yellow and black, the colours of his beloved Richmond Tigers football team.
John: I actually first came to it twenty odd years ago or so when I began getting more into bushland birds and I loved it right from day one because it has some colours on it that are very important to me in terms of my football allegiance. And it also has a beautiful big forehead which my family is renowned for. We have big heads, so I have to take the largest hat size, so just those little funny things connect me to it. But it's a beautiful bird in that it's a tough little fellow. It does a lot of reuse and recycling, so it gets in under old bark and old trees that might be dying. And it digs in there with its very powerful beak after grubs and so on. So it's just really interesting. And when it's doing that, it seems to be oblivious to the likes of you and I. If we were sitting there watching it and you can come across them occasionally if you're prepared to listen for bird noises without seeing it, because you'll hear a low, mournful little whistle. And that's usually when it's calling to its other buddies that might be around in the tree, and then you might even notice it down low on an old branch that's poking out from an Acacia or something like that, digging away.
John: And it's very powerful. Its beak is like a falcon's curved beak And so it's called Falcunculus frontatus. That's part of its genus name. But I just love it and I love its crest on the top of its head. Crazy little hairdo. And it's a nice little bird about the size of a Common Blackbird, something like that. But it's quite a robust, big chested, solid sort of bird for its size, but it's very pretty with some gorgeous yellow colours on it's on its body as well. So they live mainly in eucalypts and and their nesting is done up the top of some of the River Red Gums and they in fact will make the nest out of cobwebs and so forth, but they'll also get above them and clean out some of the leaves and so on, as if they need to keep a clear for good sighting of raptors which might prey on them or something else. Maybe also to get easy access in and out of the nest. So sometimes you'll find under a tree where they're nesting that there's a lot of shredded, torn up leaves and torn on the ground. So they're probably my beautiful little birds that I love the best in the bushland just here on the Werribee River.
Kirsty: The Crested Shrike-tit is still one of the birds that I haven't seen at the time of recording. I hope that I get to see one soon. They sound like very cool birds. Charlotte has some favorite tools that she uses when out watching the birds along the Werribee River.
Charlotte: One that's been really handy for me is the Museums Victoria app. That's such a handy way to identify birds out in the field because a lot of the time we carry our phones. With us now has photographs and recorded bird calls. So you can look and you can check. Is that the one I just heard? And sometimes you can see one bird and you're not sure if that's the one making the call. So it's a great way to be able to match them together and at home or when I'm travelling, I'd like to take a really comprehensive bird book which has got illustrations and informations about the birds and maps of where they live. It helps to try to identify species because sometimes you can think you found the right bird and then you go Hang on. That one only lives in Queensland or Western Australia, so it can't be that one. It just helps to narrow it down. And local guides from visitor information centres or councils or environmental organisations can also be really useful because they're quite specific to the area you're in and they're often small, so they're easier to fit in your pocket and they're free as well. I think patience and repetition has been a big one for me. So growing up in the UK and New Zealand, I moved to Australia about 18 years ago, so I had to relearn a whole lot of birds because the ones I'd come to know were all different here. So for me, once I started camping and spending a lot of time outdoors, that was when I really started getting familiar with different bird species. So just spending time sitting and listening to birds and then watching how they fly and feed and move around. So they all have quite individual behaviors getting familiar with those ones and referring to a guide to sort of learn their habits and their names. And I found that after a while you'll be able to pick birds by their calls, even if you can't see them, if they're hiding in trees or something, or just by their silhouettes in the sky. Because the way they move and the way that they're shaped and in their silhouettes, you'll be able to sort of pick them out. It's certainly something I enjoy having grown up with birdwatching. There's just something that's satisfying about saying, "That's that bird or that's that one". And it's knowing that you're seeing one that's a bit more rare or unusual. Yeah, it's just a lovely thing. It's just part of it just enhances that experience of being out in nature.
Kirsty: I'll put a link to the app that Charlotte just mentioned in the episode notes. John's love of nature drives him in his work. He also encourages you to activate your citizenship in order to protect your local birds and waterways.
John: You could contribute to your local municipality when they're asking you to tell them about a reserve. Does it need more trees? Does it need seats? Does it need cutting grass? And make sure your questions or your answers when you're involved in that discussion contribute to better habitat. That would be one thing. You could perhaps answer simple surveys on media sometimes. For example, the ABC has just recently run the what is your favourite tree. Well, not so long back they run ran one on what is your favorite bird. So just to contribute to those things lifts the numbers of the interest levels which are noticed by politicians and so forth. Other things you could do is actually attend meetings if you want to, where there might be a public forum and some issues being discussed. And maybe you could submit a question. It doesn't necessarily demand an answer but if you submit the question just asking about the point, then the people in power sitting up at the top end of the meeting will say, "Oh, well, someone's interested in this". So it doesn't really matter what they say, but you're starting to just put pressure on them just by asking the question. Perhaps some people could write a simple email to the local politician or a councillor. Again, it doesn't have to be very highly flutent language, it just has to be simply basic stuff. You know like, "Why don't we see so many of this certain bird anymore?". After all, it was in lower New South Wales just a week or two ago that some local scientists have said that the platypus is in trouble in that area and we know platypus across Australia are declining or at least south-eastern Australia where they live. But koalas are the same. So we need these sorts of questions to come out of the mouths of the public so that our governments know that people are concerned about that or else. Then of course you could join a local organisation like the Werribee River Association or donate some money to those groups or join BirdLife Australia. There's a whole range of other things that are really simple but very, very important. And so you choose the ones that you can do at your level of interest and passion.
Kirsty: John and Charlotte have left me wondering what birds I might see at my local waterway and also wondering what else I can do to be a supporter of wild birds. Many thanks to Marc Anderson for his recordings of the White-faced Heron and Crested Shrike-tit, which can be found on the Xeno-Canto website. And a huge thank you to John and Charlotte for sharing their love of birds with us and for their commitment to protecting the Werribee River. You can find out more about their work in the episode notes or at weekendbirder.com
