Birdwatching has been a pastime since time unwritten. By sitting on a bench and observing birds perched in the trees nearby, you are birdwatching as surely as those who trek into a forest with ears pricked for a specific bird call. It’s a risk and a meditation: there’s never a guarantee that you’ll see what you’re after, yet it’s an inherently peaceful activity that’s easiest and most successful when you’re surrounded by nature and quiet. That is, if it can be measured by levels of success.
The first people credited with the scientific study of birds in Tasmania were John “The bird man” Gould and his wife, Elizabeth Gould, in the mid-19th century. Together they created the first known records and diagrams of Australian birds, and their collection of lithographs continues to hold indispensable scientific and artistic value.
In Tasmania today there is a community of birdwatchers who, in true Tasmanian fashion, have all met each other at some time or another. One of these people is Peter Vaughan, with whom I spent a day at some of his favourite birdwatching spots near Hobart.
I first met Peter on a birdwatching expedition held by the Avian Club at the University of Tasmania, of which he is now at the helm. At the time I was surprised at how knowledgeable he was, given he was just 23, the same age as me. He laughingly refers to himself as a bird nerd, but after watching him identify countless birds in the wild by colour, song and behaviour, his dedication is obvious.
On our trip together with his partner, Andi, he explained to me that travelling with his family around Australia when he was young gave him ample opportunity to explore the natural world, but it was when he was 13 and received his first digital camera that he became enamoured with the world of birds. Pointing to the trees and ferns that swayed over the edges of the road, he didn’t need to explain to me how well Tasmania nurtures these kinds of curiosities, as well.
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Our first stop was Wielangta, a tranquil, verdant wet forest about 40 minutes from Hobart, off a bumpy road strewn with enough rocks to make punctured tyres a danger. Used occasionally for nearby logging operations, it hadn’t been repaired for years, but as we bounced along Peter just chuckled and assured me he had a tyre in the boot.
The quiet and thick undergrowth of Wielangta make it an ideal home for a variety of birds such as endemic Tasmanian thornbills, Tasmanian scrubwrens and scrubtits, as well as olive whistlers, pink robins and Bassian thrushes. While he and Andi prepared their DSLRs and high-speed lenses, Peter told me that they come to this area regularly to check on a pair of Scrubtits that nest nearby, “just to see how they’re going.” It almost sounded as if we were dropping in on an old friend.
Being mid-June and the beginning of another Tasmanian winter, we were pleasantly surprised with blue skies when we arrived. Sunlight filtered through the branches over the track, and our footsteps were muffled by the ferns layering the ground. Peter walked carefully ahead; at any rustle or twitch in the undergrowth, he swung his camera around and stood completely still. If nothing happened, we moved on, but once or twice a thornbill or fantail darted out of the brush to give us an inquisitive look.
At the track’s halfway point, Andi played a recorded scrubtit call, a high-pitched, lilting trill. Knowing this was the area the scrubtits frequented, we waited and listened for a response.
There are mixed views on the ethics of playing birdsong recordings in the wild, but Peter explained that, because June is outside of the breeding season, we wouldn’t be disturbing any birds so long as we kept the playbacks to a minimum. During the breeding season, and especially in the case of endangered, shy birds, it’s best to avoid coaxing them into the open since it draws them away from their nests and may leave their young vulnerable.
Within a few seconds of playing the first call we heard a familiar call back, before a tiny bird barely four inches tall appeared in the bushes to our right. Peter immediately ducked and “pished”, meaning to make a literal “pish” sound to get a bird’s attention, until a second scrubtit appeared in the branches higher up. Coloured grey and tan with lemon-yellow patches on their bellies, the pair flitted across the track between us while Peter and Andi held their eyes on the viewfinders, waiting for the perfect moment. Only three out of 30 photographs came out clear, but when we zoomed in, their bright eyes were looking directly at us.
Thanks to the ease of carrying smartphones in our pockets, bird photography has become an increasingly common practice. Compared to the often-grisly methods the Gould’s and their contemporaries would have had to employ to make their detailed lithographs, today we don’t even need to have specialised equipment. It’s easy to forget that Gould was largely successful in part because he was a talented taxidermist, which shows in the accuracy of his work.
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After Wielangta, we headed towards Eaglehawk Neck, an area Peter visits to observe sea birds over the open water. In 2019 he wrote his thesis on gadfly petrels, in the process taking more than 30 trips out to sea. He and Andi laughed when he admitted that this was a few more than necessary.
While he set up a telescope pointed towards Fossil Island, a rocky landmass a few hundred metres offshore, I asked Peter about his favourite bird encounter. With much consideration, and the important caveat that it’s subject to change, he eventually said it would have to be the sooty albatross.
During one of his boat trips last year he saw a single, charcoal-grey albatross floating contentedly in the water by the edge of the boat. Small and slender compared to other albatross, and uncommon in Tasmanian waters, sooty albatross look as though they have a little white smile painted across their dark beaks. It was only the second time he’d seen one, and it stayed almost within arm’s reach while he got his camera out and took a photograph.
It wasn’t just that Peter has a special fondness for seabirds, or that it was an interesting, comic-looking bird that made the sighting a favourite. The encounter was unique as well. I have to imagine that coming across that kind of rarity when he least expected it, and the way it seemed to patiently wait while he prepared his camera, must have made it feel something like a chance encounter with a person you never thought you’d see in the flesh.
“There’s just an element of mystique, and intrigue almost, around seabirds.”
It’s true that there is something charismatic and mysterious about them. The sleekness of their feathers, their streamlined shape and the ease with which they slip into the waves is mesmerising. The ocean is one of the final frontiers for scientific discovery, a frontier in which seabirds rank high in terms of the cutting edge of research, and Tasmania happens to be close to certain paths of vast seabird journeys. Tasmania is one of the most advantageous places to be, “just that little bit further south”, Peter says, sitting snugly between the Southern Ocean and the Tasman Sea.
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It isn’t just the abundance of seabirds that make Tasmania a special place for birdwatchers. The variety of habitat that Tasmania provides – temperate rainforest, montane vegetation, button grass plains and more – mean the island is home to a great variety of Australian birds, in combinations rarely seen on the mainland. Tasmania has fewer bird species overall than the bigger states, but what we have are far more accessible given pretty much everywhere in Tasmania is within a day’s drive.
Peter Vaughan added, “You have to be bonkers to consider a 10-hour roundtrip in a day a reasonable thing to do.” Or a bird watcher.
Isabel Howard is a young, homegrown writer and creative living in Hobart. She is passionate about the environment and cultural diversity. She recently finished an undergraduate degree in English and Japanese, and is interested in continuing study in international politics and writing.