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Standing very still, watching for lerts

September 26 2002
By Bary Dowling

I offer the hackneyed aphorism, "Don't do something, just stand there", not as dictum, apophthegm or gnome, but as something self-evident - a truism.

Once, in a state of anxiety, I left my Richmond slum, deadline due, hunting copy, which can only ever be God-given. I walked what estate agents call "vibrant Bridge Road", suffered Burnley Street with fortitude and crossed the Yarra at Walmer Street where local Friends have restored the under-storey, and my state of mind. Over the hill, I stepped on to Kane's Bridge to cross the Yarra - which is a coiling serpent - yet again, and saw, in the riparian scrub, a heap of birds. God murmured, "Baz, you don't have to do anything; just stand there."

I whipped out the binoculars and notebook and was lucky. Many of the little bush birds I saw, though common further out, are not always seen from Kane's Bridge - spinebills, thornbills, silver-eyes, superb blue wrens, red-browed firetails, white-naped and white-plumed honeyeaters. I had fluked on to that phenomenon - common in the non-breeding season - bush birds foraging together. They do so for safety in numbers, it seems, and because they follow overlapping tucker - nectar, pollen, seed, insects - often working at different levels with honeyeaters in the crown, firetails on the ground.

A spotted pardalote said "di-di", then added an extra "peep", and I realised I was neglecting the residents - if I stand on Kane's Bridge and don't hear a spotted pardalote, it usually means I'm not listening.

An amiable bloke, with a kid lolling in a pusher, and a wife, grinned at me. I said they looked a happy family. He said, "Yeah, pretty rough wife, though." She smiled dutifully, then beautifully. We laughed, the sun beamed.

A kookaburra laughed, too, and a butcherbird spoke. I wondered how many of the species of native birds I could see from Kane's Bridge, or hear. I got 22 in 10 minutes, including two duck species, little and red wattlebirds, cormorants, scrubwren, moorhen, coot, a lonely night heron and a cocky. I did not lie or cheat by counting ravens and gulls, which are always there, but were not.

What were those two holes in the river? Ah, the nostrils of a tortoise. I thought of the country girl who said to me, "My brother smells real good." Puzzled, I asked if he used deodorant. "No," she said, "He's got three nostrils." I wondered why we, and tortoises, have two nostrils. They connect at the back: why not one?

Staying still is the only way I can see frogs during the day. I approach the pool, let them all go plop-plop and silent, then I remain motionless 'till they show their nostrils, climb out to sit on leaves, start up again.

Bloke I know, standing still on a narrow cliff path, had an echidna walk over his boots. It was not alert, none of them are lerts, but most snakes are.

I stared down a tiger snake: me-and-stillness versus it-and-stillness as it hung, half-reared. I won. It collapsed, waved along on its belly into the scrub.

The snake has two nostrils - neither of them for smelling - and one lung. The long, forked, flickering tongue is what it smells with, collecting scent particles from the air, transferring them to organs in the roof of its mouth. Snakes of many species hunt by smell - hence all the flickering - and use sight at close range only. Their eyes focus poorly, but quickly pick up movement. They have no eyelids, just transparent scales over each eye - spectacles. They lack external ears, but respond to ground vibrations, perhaps transmitted by the jawbone to the inner ear.

To grow, they slough their skins, usually whole, with the spectacles in place; marvellous.


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