Siddle Down Under: A Guest Blog by Ken Cross

A few years ago now a movie came out from Australia starring one Paul Hogan entitled, Crocodile Dundee. It was a story of a ‘character’ from the outback – a crocodile hunting, buffalo whispering, hard drinking, smart mouthed man’s man, who made his way to North America where, in the biggest of big cities, he had to use his wits to survive. It was a more-or-less funny fish-out-of –water story.   

In a similar vein I bring you the parallel story of Chris Siddle in his latest adventure down under.

Chris’s story is similar to that of Crocodile Dundee.

Chris is from Vernon, a small town in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, Canada. He was an English teacher. And he is a bird watcher who enjoys reading in his spare time.

Would he survive on the other side of the world in the separate creation known as Australia? Would he thrive in the outback?

As it happens, yes.

Before we get into how he thrived, we should determine why Chris would want to leave Canada for Australia in the first place [or in this case the third place]. Crocodile Dundee left Australia for North America because there was a story in it and, ultimately, for love; in Croc’s case – a love for a woman. Chris’s story is eerily similar. Chris fell in love…not with a woman but with Australia. The love began at a very early age, a formative stage we may say, such that it became his destiny. The love began, like many of his loves, with a bird; an Australian bird immortalised in an Australian song. One of his teachers, for reasons which will forever remain unclear, taught him to sing, ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree’. Now I can mention the entire lyric as it is agreeably brief;

‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,

Merry merry king of the bush is he,

Laugh Kookaburra laugh,

Gay your life must be.’

The age of the song can be gauged by the use, or by contemporary standards mis-use of the word, ‘gay’ –as at the time of writing the Kookaburra’s life was to be envied.

Now if you are beginning to struggle and feel bad because you do not know what a Kookaburra is, do not panic. After all this would not be a Chris Siddle OK birder blog entry if there was no educational birding content…

The Kookaburra is a distinctly Australian bird. It is a kingfisher – the largest in the world. Its name is an onomatopoeia; being an abbreviation of the bird’s particularly raucous call. It is huge and brown and white with a humongous bill, seemingly specially adapted to its modern past-time stealing steaks and snags from barbies.

Figure 1. A wild but very obliging Laughing Kookaburra allowed me to get close as it watched for prey on the lawn at Kondadilla Falls National Park near Mapleton, Qsld., 31 March 2015. (Ph. - C.Siddle).

Anyway back to Chris’s story. So love was established early and the first full on flourishes were felt many years later when an opportunity for a visit down under presented itself through a BC birding buddy, one Gary Davidson who was living the dream, for the second time; having a year living, working and birding on the island of Tasmania. Chris and his other love, wife and childhood sweetheart, Sonja flew across the Pacific to Tasmania and saw Australian landscapes and the birds within for the very first time, including his very first tickable Kookaburras. 

So the seed was planted and then grew. In 2007 it flourished!

Sonja got a teaching exchange to Australia so the Siddles could live in Springwood in an area known as the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. Here Chris learned, unlike Crocodile Dundee, to blend in to the local population. Strolling around muttering, “Tharteen”*, before thoughtfully adding, “mate”, and suppressing the desire to further add an enquirying, “eh?” he became your typical Aussie. Albeit one who is five-three, bespectacled and bedecked with binoculars, and armed, not with a tinnie, but a scope and camera.

Chris’s blending developed like much Chris has achieved through not-insignificant rational thought and research. The latter achieved by avid reading and viewing of decent Aussie texts and films. By end of 2007 Chris had read Australian novelist Tim Winton, novelist and historian [and rugby league tragic**] Tom Keneally, historian Geoffrey Blainey, Sarah Murgatroyd of ‘The Dig Tree’ fame, scientist, mammologist and Australian of the Year - Tim Flannery, historian and socialist in addition to being champion of Indigenous Issues - John Pilger, and novelist Kate Grenville. TV had provided such classics as Spicks and Specks, and Kath and Kim. 

While Sonja was welded to teaching fourth grade at Penrith, Chris was, to coin a phrase, as free as a bird, and visited Cairns, Daintree, the Atherton Tablelands, Newcastle, Lamington, Adelaide, Melbourne in addition to enjoying pelagic trips off Woolongong. By the end of 2007 Chris's bird list grew to 450 and his love grew beyond measure.

This is where I come in. My name is Ken Cross and I’m a birder; resident in Australia. Chris and I had a mutual friend in Gary Davidson who I had birded with in his prior visits to Australia. Chris was primed to visit me in 2007; however the expected birth of my first and final daughter proved to be an obstacle to birding. In a surprise twist, a few years later, Chris hosted my visit and took me birding as I, like Sonja, had scored a teaching exchange to Nakusp, a mere few hours to the east of Chris’s Vernon. When visiting I invited Chris to re-kindle his Aussie love affair and to visit South East Queensland where I reside. This did not take much rhetorical skill. So in 2015 another chapter of Siddle Down Under was written!   

On 27 March, 2015, the Siddles arrived at my Mapleton Manor, or at least the vacated house of my neighbours across the street, to the herald of screeching Yellow- tailed Black Cockatoos. Think birds the size of Scarlet Macaws with lazy wing beats, all black save a yellow daub on their face and large yellow panels in their tails. These birds, in some bizarre sense the ecological equivalent to woodpeckers, fly from tree to tree armed with massive bills used to tear branches apart for the grubs within. Their yellow tails become
agreeably more prominent when they brake from their flight.

Figure 2 - a male Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo in the rain at 1 Daymar Road, Mapleton, 1 April, 2015. Ph - C.Siddle

Most birders know that coming a close second to birding overseas in new and exotic lands is the thrill of showing your local birds, animals and special places to birders from exotic lands and so began our exploration  to the local Gheerulla Falls Track. Being Australia our waterfalls are generally not much to look at; however who needs falls when there are spectacular Spectacled Monarchs –a flycatcher, dark around the eyes and orange on the throat and breast.   Here, too as we listened to Logrunners below on the forest floor and, more tantalisingly, Rose-crowned Fruit-dove above, [both equally unseen] our eyes were attracted to a rather large lizard, a Lace Monitor or to use the name I prefer a Common Goanna. This species can hit nearly three metres long from nose to tail tip so is a lot longer than the iguana whose name was bastardised to initially describe it. It is a beautiful animal; however they often attract my anger as they steal my chook’s eggs. [Chook = chicken]

Figure 3 - The New Holland Honeyeater, Phylidonyris novaehollandiae, was one of the first Australian honeyeaters to be collected and described by science, back in 1790, two years after the First Fleet landed. 

Figure 4. A Goanna on the back lawn, April, 2015. Of the world's 50 species of monitor lizards, a full 25 are lizards of Oz. This one, the Lace Monitor, Varanus varius, is common along the eastern coastal areas of Australia. Ph- CS. 

Closer tracks to home revealed more birds; Pale Yellow and Eastern Yellow Robins, Little (Rufous) and Grey Shrike-thrushes, Olive-backed Orioles, the latter sadly unable to compete with the colours of the North American entry into the Oriole field. And of course there were Honeyeaters. The first ones were heard – Bell Miners. Bell Miners are honeyeaters who are always heard before they are seen as they live in colonies and their constant contact calls ring through the forest. Angry pishing brought them to mob and revealed them as cute little olive green birds with bright orange bills and legs. White –naped Honeyeaters were seen too as were Scarlet Honeyeaters, the latter one of the few Honeyeaters I could put up to win a beauty contest against your warblers!

Weekends allowed, for me at least, more birding and early in April we did a little sprint around some sunshine Coast sites. As we left the hills of Mapleton a Grey Goshawk sped across the road – a poor view of a cracking bird! Wappa Dam revealed many common waterbirds but best among them was the spectacular Great Crested Grebe. On the water’s edge Restless Flycatcher attracted us as did the far less showy Peaceful Dove. Farm flats around the Maroochydore River revealed, Golden-headed Cisticola and Tawny Grassbird – both birds which are subtle in colour and reserved in behaviour. Above them on power-lines perched our smallest falcon – an Australian Hobby. Nearby at a residential estate named Park Lake Estates we wandered about enjoying yet more honeyeaters – Brown, White-cheeked and Little Wattlebird [which is a another Honeyeater]. Little Egrets and Royal Spoonbills worked the edges of the Estate’s lakes. Then, because no doubt I was showing off, I took Chris to some sewage ponds. Here there was some good shit. No, seriously; Black-winged Stilt [I’m not sure what IOC is calling it], the poorly named Hardhead (aka White-eyed Duck), tiny Black-fronted dotterals and the main target as they are elsewhere uncommon Chestnut Teal. Annoyingly as we were watching the ponds through the wire fence surrounding them a calling Mistletoe bird was taunting or rather several Mistletoe birds were taunting. We never saw them well which was a shame as the Mistletoe bird is the only Australian Flowerpecker – a family of birds that has spread throughout Asia but refused to establish in the Americas, and it is bright red and pretty attractive.  

The following day we moved to the south of Blackall Range to stroll through some protected hill forest that overlook the Glasshouse Mountains. These mountains are really igneous volcanic plugs; evidence of long-gone tectonic activity and were the first features named by Europeans in the whole of South east Queensland. Captain James Cook sailing past in 1770 saw the mountains reflecting back the rising sun and named them. Following the geography and history we set off for one of my favourite sites in SE Qld – a little village by the sea, Toorbul. Toorbul does not actually look to the sea but across a passage to Bribie Island, so is shallow watered allowing, at low tide, both mud flats and sand bars. Here good numbers of migratory shorebirds gather to feed and roost, Far Eastern Curlew, Greenshank, Grey- tailed Tattler, Red-necked Stint, Bar-tailed Godwit and Great Knot to name a few. Chris was delighted as waders, non showy little grey birds, are among his passion. To further his swooning a Brahminy Kite – a white-headed raptor sailed lazily past. A few mangrove specialties make Toorbul a must visit – Mangrove Kingfisher, Mangrove Honeyeater and Mangrove Gerygone [a small warbler] – and all were seen well.  In the passage impressive numbers of Black Swan can be seen – circa 400. Finally for Chris the marsupial enthusiast we admired the big mob of Grey
Kangaroos that can always be seen decorating the streets of this village.

Figure 5 - One of the few birds that regularly occur in both Australia and North America is the Bar-tailed Godwit, here on the mangrove mudflats at Toorbul, Qsld. Ph - CS. 

Lifers of different kinds followed as we crossed from the mainland to Bribie Island. Crustaceans, specifically Soldier Crabs, were seen marching over sand flats a sight that had eluded Chris on earlier visits. These blue crabs march forward rather than scuttling sideways hence their name. An Eastern Bearded Dragon, a startling yellow mouthed agamid, was added to Chris’s reptile list, while we checked out yet more waders; Pacific Golden Plover and finally a Striated Heron. Our day ended back at home after dark with a couple more natural history discoveries; specifically an Eastern Horseshoe Bat that had been using my down-stair’s storage areas as a roost site and a wonderful Great Barred Frog calling on the lawn.

Figure 5. Our hosts, the Crosses of Mapleton, Queensland. Back row, left to right: Tom, Ken, and Megan. Front: Milly and Matt. Ph - CS. 

I could go on [and on] and mention more outings that we undertook and mention every critter that we encountered however that would end in death threats to me and would achieve little. Chris himself would like to document an enjoyable few days that we had at Giraween National Park and then to Bunya Mountains. Hopefully my account of Siddle Down Under will provide an opportunity for Chris to publish some of his Aussie images and a minor advertisement for more OK birders to come down under!

Ken Cross | Local Branch Convenor                       

Sunshine Coast Branch

BirdLife Southern Queensland

PO Box 375                                       

Annerley QLD 4103                 

southernqld@birdlife.org.au |birdlife.org.au                   

ABN 75 149 124 774                           

birds are in our nature

Tel: 0754457881

* The first word I felt I could pronounce in a truly Australian way was the number thirteen, running together West Canadian versions of "the" and "dean". Next I learned that "beer", an extremely important word in Australia, is two syllables, "be-yaa". Aside from our weird pronunciations wherein we stress the letter R, Canadian English is fairly colourless compared to Strine. My favourite example of an Australian simile comes from Ken Cross who said one night when we were looking for owls and nocturnal mammals that a Greater Glider should be "as obvious as testicles on a dog". 

** "rugby league tragic" = Some things only Australians understand,  so as a Canadian I have no idea what Ken means. Most people know Keneally as the author of Schindler's List. He's a wonderful writer and deserves a world-wide readership, as does the latest Australian I have discovered, historian and essayist, Don Watson. 

Many thanks to Ken Cross for his article which he and I dedicate to Megan because she's awesome, man!