The Mecca of birdlife

This article is part of this exercise.

Melbourne’s Western Treatment Plant is world-class for birdwatching.

Birds of the Western Treatment Plant

Waders are challenging to identify. Even Fred Smith—birdwatcher extraordinaire—once called them “little brown jobs”. In other words, they all look the same.

One of the best places to see waders in Australia is the Western Treatment Plant. For the uninitiated, the idea of a sewage plant being a RAMSAR site may be puzzling. But birds flock here from as far as Siberia and Alaska to spend their summer months down under, and once you see the variety of birds here, you won’t question why it’s been hailed as a world-class birdwatching venue.

Exploring the Western Treatment Plant isn’t as messy as you might expect. Most people take a 4WD and, essentially, go on a bird safari. So, trudging knee-deep in waste isn’t on the cards. Instead, armed with binoculars the size of my head, one Sunday, I piled into the car with four other birders. I was prepared for anything.

Golden-headed Cisticola http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozjulian/285405132/

For a city-dweller and a person relatively new to birds, the Western Treatment Plant doesn’t disappoint. The treatment plant is only half an hour from Melbourne, yet the range of birdlife compared to inner-city Melbourne is astronomical. The day I joined the other birders, we picked up 97 species. That’s a high number, even for an experienced birder.

Instead of being restricted to the usual Common Myna, Common Blackbird, Australian Magpie and Silver Gull—all found in Melbourne—the treatment plant was home to raptors, waders, wrens, finches and more.

My favourite bird of the day was the Golden-headed Cisticola; a small orange grassbird with dark streaky plumage. Though not a wader, it could be described as one of Fred Smith’s “little brown jobs”. It wasn’t until I looked at one carefully through my binoculars that I noticed what a beautiful bird it was.

Tips for the traveller

For those of you toying with the idea of spending a day at the Western Treatment Plant in search of birds, I have a few tips for you.

• Go with someone who knows birds. You will see double (if not more) the amount of birds you would have seen otherwise.

• Definitely bring binoculars. You won’t see a thing without them.

• You need to a permit to enter the Western Treatment Plant. Join someone who has one.

• Open your mind.

Many people think of birds as simply part of the landscape—like a blade of grass in a meadow. But birds are everywhere; they come in all different shapes and sizes, and it’s not until you realise how many birds there are around us, and the different roles they play in the same ecosystem, that you’ll come to appreciate those “little brown jobs” for what they truly are. That is, anything but something that is simply little and brown.

Squirrel Gliders uncovered

This article is part of this exercise.

See elusive Australian marsupials up-close, and help conserve their future.

Photos by C Eaw, used with permission.

Secretive small mammals

Enveloped in the blackness of night, the single light beam struck the tree like a Light Saber. Crouched on a limb was a large possum, round as a ball, with a long tail curled in a perfect “J”. It was a Common Ringtail Possum.

Smaller Australian marsupials are elusive. Like Ringtails, you may only encounter one by wielding a spotlight at night. Even at night, seeing small mammals in Australia is a challenge. It wasn’t until I joined the Regent Honeyeater Project that I saw Squirrel Gliders up close.

The Regent Honeyeater Project

The project’s name implies it’s concerned with birds exclusively, but it turns out, it works towards conserving mammals too.

I chanced upon the Regent Honeyeater Project through the Melbourne University Mountaineering Club (MUMC). Being largely a community-based project, many people hear about the Regent Honeyeater Project through their local bird group, environmental group or walking group.

That’s how I found myself driving a carload of MUMC members to Lurg, a hilly district about 200 km north-east of Melbourne. This landscape is more famously known as ‘Kelly Country’, infamous bushranger Ned Kelly’s trampling-ground.

Today the landscape looks vastly different. Most of the bush has been cleared for farmland, producing rolling, rocky hills dotted with “islands” of Box and Ironbark trees.

Mugga Ironbarks are magnificent trees. Their bark is a deep red wine-colour, and their leaves are a misty blue. It’s in this Box-Ironbark habitat where the Regent Honeyeater Project has installed nesting boxes.

Nesting boxes

Our job this weekend was not installing nesting boxes, but checking them. Checking nesting boxes isn’t as simple as simply opening a box.

Using a contour-map, we were expected to navigate Box-Ironbark forest, towing a trailer and a ladder. Armed with pens and clipboards filled with data sheets, we piled into my car—destination; somewhere in the Lurg district, possibly off-road.

Nesting boxes were in all kinds of locations; planted roadsides, planted creek beds, and within patches of bush in private properties. Every site was different, and at each one, we wandered amongst the young trees for some time, searching for the one with a pale green nesting box.

Firmly, we planted the ladder in the ground at the tree’s base before the most adventurous of us volunteered to climb first. The atmosphere at the tree’s base was always excited silence, since we were afraid any boisterousness might scare the gliders away—if any were around.

Gliders

Bracing myself against a branch, I opened the box gently and peered in. Amongst the circular nest of dry Eucalypt leaves littering the box’s bottom, were the Squirrel Gliders. There’s something heart-warming about poking your nose into a wooden box to find a Squirrel Glider family huddling together on a brisk day. Satisfied, I lowered the box’s lid gingerly and twisted the wire latch shut.

The simple fact that the surest way I could see Squirrel Gliders was by looking inside boxes installed by the Regent Honeyeater project says something. Box-Ironbark forests are disappearing, and it’s not good news for animals like the Squirrel Glider that are found only in Box-Ironbark habitat.

That’s why projects such as these are critical to wildlife conservation. And, they’re a brilliant way to explore the Victorian countryside.

PANPA favours News, but readers may not

PANPA‘s 2009 news site awards don’t reflect Melbourne metropolitan news sites’ figures.

This year, PANPA (Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association) awarded all its news site awards to News Digital Media web sites. The metropolitan/national news site award went to news.com.au; the rural/regional/suburban news site award went to leadernews.com.au; and specialist news site award went to The Punch.

What’s interesting – for us Melburnians – is that PANPA’s preference for News Digital Media sites isn’t reflective of news site success in Melbourne; at least, for major metropolitan newspapers. According to the figures, Fairfax Digital’s Age web site outperforms News Digital Media’s Herald Sun web site by a mile.

Right now, web site success is difficult to quantify, but both News Digital Media and Fairfax Digital use unique browsers, page impressions and average sessions to measure their web sites’ success.

Here’s how the Age web site outperforms the Herald Sun web site:

• the Age web site unique browsers is four times that of the Herald Sun web site
• the Age web site has 70 times the page impressions the Herald Sun web site has
• the average session on the Age web site is two minutes longer than that of the Herald Sun web site.

It could be that the Age web site’s success over the Herald Sun web site is an anomaly – but if not, are PANPA’s judging criteria not reflective of actual web site success?

PANPA’s 2009 news site judging criteria differed across its categories, but generally the focus was on design, use of the medium, original reporting, interactivity, promotion and site layout. Does this mean that these factors don’t contribute to a successful news site? And does this mean that what we consider to be outstanding news sites – visually, and in terms of news quality and media use – aren’t actually successful news sites?

And if so, does this merely suggest that our current methods of determining web site success are not appropriate? Or, does this suggest that widely accepted notions of what constitutes a ‘good’ news site are wrong?

Or does this point to questions about readerships, and how they affect news site success? (The Age readers belong to a higher income-earning bracket, and therefore may have more access to computers and more active computer habits – this may explain the Age web site’s success in terms of figures).

Essentially, what all this indicates are that the methods for measuring and judging web site success may need to be re-evaluated; and that other factors, such as readership, may need to be considered.