In the past raptors have chased starlings or mynas (like the peregrine falcons), crested pigeons (like the brown goshawks), mice (like the black-shouldered kites and kestrels) or ducks (like the grey goshawk). Some just soared along and away, like the sea eagle and the wedge-tailed eagle. The whistling kites, however, came to breed and feed.
TAFE students coming from Taiwan, the Congo, Turkey, Thailand, China and Ethiopia gathered in the wind for a day at the wetlands.
Last Wednesday everything happened. We planted Poa tussocks and Towrang bottlebrushes, weeded and cleaned up … all as usual. The ESL class from TAFE came some days earlier with Raina their teacher and the wind blew us all back to the classroom. But Wednesday was perfect. Divalls came along and all of a sudden the first pool in the anabranch was lowered (for the golf club), new lagoons were created to (over)compensate, the walking track was graded and the bike path was too.
The real drama, however, started with a small crowd of people staring at a pair of birds in the tall, sickly pines across the street. Read on for a set of pictures depicting the unfolding drama of the day. Click on any picture to expand it …
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- One bird cleans itself while its mate chases ravens away from their nest across the paddock.
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- One of the whistling kites swooped suddenly down over the wetlands. It made three passes as it found its target.
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- A pair of moorhens tried to get their chicks under the cover of the stones. One chick ran up the shore and was immediately carried away by the whistling kite. The parents seemed shocked and stunned and stood by the shore staring at each other for a while.
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- As the kite took its prey back to its mate, the moorhens raced across to get their two surviving chicks. They quickly took them into the tangled water ribbon beds, a much safer place.
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- While the kites were feeding, we noticed that most of the birds were breeding. The coots were building a nest of ribbon grass and turning it into floating island, tethered to the tangled water plants.
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- The black-fronted dotterels had added another egg to their nest amid the dust of the old brickworks.
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- Even the land birds were breeding. The welcome swallow chicks flew skilfully around with their bright new feathers, but their baby yellow mouth edges gave their age away.
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- In the warmth of the day a long-necked turtle climbed ashore to bask in the sun.
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- FROGS members went back to planting native grasses near the bird hide.
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- The team from Divalls worked on the tracks and removed a giant pile of dead trees, rocks and weeds.
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- The peace was broken by the frantic quacks of a mother black duck, clearly in distress.
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- Baby moorhens aren’t much to eat and the kite had returned anticipating a good meal from all those fluffy ducklings. Close behind came ravens, just in case they could grab something the kite missed.
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- As the kite swooped, the mother duck quacked and the ducklings dived.
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- Over and over the kite swooped on the ducks. Every time the mother duck would quack and her ducklings would dive.
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- The mother duck would then swim round in circles to hide the traces of her diving babies from the kite. When it left she would wait anxiously for her ducklings to appear again.
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- Pop! Up came the first duckling.
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- Pop, pop. Up came more.
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- When all her ducklings were accounted and she got a break from the tag-teaming kites, the mother duck headed away quacking loudly, but the tangled water-ribbons prevented her from manoeuvring quickly.
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- A wood duck and a group of hardheads swam towards the mother duck from the other end of the main pond, going around the islands and berms to get there.
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- The hardheads brought almost every other waterbird with them, creating a party of wood ducks, hardheads, other black ducks, grebes and coots so near the mother black duck that the kite became confused and gave up on them.
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- The moorhens and their chicks were still in the ribbon weed and a kite dived on them.
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- Unlike the long yellow legs of harriers and goshawks, whistling kites only have stubby ones. The moorhens were safe among the water-ribbons and the kite ended up entangled in weed and sopping wet.
- As the bedraggled kite sat on the rocks with ribbon weed tangled in its feet, the crowd of ducks milled around the female black duck and her ducklings once more and then made their way back to the other side of the main pond. No more chicks were taken while we were there, but the kites will need to take more in the near future to prevent their own chicks from starving. High level predators such as the whistling kites are a good thing for the wetlands. Their presence means the ecosystem is working and that there is enough food available at every level of the food pyramid.