Back with the lyrebirds

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I thought the new KLIA2 airport outside Kuala Lumpur was confusing when I arrived there from Borneo but it was even more confusing when I returned there two days later for my flight out to Melbourne. There are various teething troubles with it being new as well, but they are really issues which shouldn't have been there at all, like having enormously long queues at immigration but only half the desks manned. At the McDonalds counter (because everywhere else was either still closed or too expensive to eat at) there was a never-diminishing queue about thirty people long, and only one person serving!

I arrived in Melbourne at 11pm and discovered they have a new “smart card” system where Australians and New Zealanders (as “honourary Australian citizens”) scan their passport and get an electronic card which they use to go through a special gate bypassing the immigration desks completely, then you collect your bag from the luggage carousel and walk straight out of the airport with no x-raying of bags or even a passport stamp (the guy at the exit just takes the card, says “smart card, just go straight through mate” and you're out) – it did not feel right somehow! I had not eaten anything since late morning, so it was back to McDonalds. They had bbq beef burgers for $2 each so I got three of those. They were literally the worst burgers I have ever eaten, and that includes the one I found lying on a toilet floor in China which I got half-way through eating before realising that it wasn't a burger at all. And that it wasn't dead yet.

The bus to the city costs $18 and terminates at the Southern Cross bus-train station, which is just near most of the cheap backpacker hostels. I had looked for a cheap place on the internet when in Melaka and found the Melbourne Connection which was only $15 for a dorm bed if staying for a week or more. However they required full payment in advance and had a no-refund policy. That wasn't suspicious at all. I had a look on Tripadvisor and found pages of one-star reviews with titles like “worst hostel ever!” – well worth checking them out for a laugh, or a scare! Funnily enough, there was also the occasional four or five star review from someone with only one review saying something like “best hostel ever, never stayed somewhere so clean”. Very believable. The place I settled on was the King St Backpackers, directly opposite the Melbourne Connection as it happens, which is $26 for a dorm. I was very impressed with it and will make it my regular Melbourne backpackers from now on. It has free internet, free unlimited breakfast (toast, cereals, etc), free pancakes on Sunday (from 11am), free unlimited Big Breakfast (baked beans, sausages, bacon) on Tuesday morning, free pasta night on Wednesday. I saved a lot of money on food while staying there!! I was at the backpackers for eight nights and spent a grand total of just Aus$15.60 on food -- and that included the McDonalds burgers. I didn't even have to pay for lunches because I just made sandwiches from the breakfast bread and took them away with me. Then there's the free food shelf which meant I got dinner for free most nights as well. (For people not familiar with hostels, there is always a free food shelf in the kitchen area, and when people check out they leave any unwanted food-stuffs there for others to use; often they are packaged goods like pasta or rice and canned goods). On the first night I had a look and found some rice, a couple of potatoes, an apple, a lemon, and some tomato sauce: I can make something out of that no sweat. It was just like Top Chef and the result was the best dinner since …. well, the last dinner was the sewer burgers from the airport McDonalds so not much competition!

There are the usual backpacker types here, including the ones who sit on the computers watching movies or playing games while other people want to use them for more important things, the ones who cannot speak at a volume lower than “too loud” (those are mainly the English girls), and of course the lone guy who homes in on every single girl there with the same line (“hey, how are you – oh, you know what, I thought you were someone else. I know someone who looks just like you and I thought you were her, that's why I came over to talk to you. So... where are you from?”). Now, I know what you're thinking: how do I find time to do any outside birding when I'm so busy with indoor birding, but in fact it isn't me. It's somebody else. Honest. If it was me the line would be “you must be a parking ticket, because you've got “fine” written all over you” :p

The next morning I walked to Botanic Gardens (not far away) where I stayed for most of the day and saw various common birds, adding 22 species to my year list. Oddly the only ducks I could find there were Pacific black ducks (grey ducks to NZers) – no wood ducks or white-eyed ducks or anything else. I didn't have an Australian field guide with me of course, so it was good I could still remember all the birds – although rainbow lorikeets and coots aren't exactly challenging to ID! There are unfortunately no longer grey-headed fruit bats in the gardens because they were “encouraged to move elsewhere” due to damage to the roosting trees.

There are a wide range of birdy places around Melbourne. I decided my first one (after the Botanic Gardens the previous day) was to be the Dandenong Ranges, partly because it is easy to get to on the local trains, partly because there are superb lyrebirds there, and partly because it has a funny name. For my purposes the best train stop is at Belgrave, the last stop on the line. This is closest to the Sherbrooke Forest which is a reliable spot for the lyrebirds. I went out there on a Saturday and unfortunately discovered that this weekend was the one the city had decided to use to do repair work on that particular train line! I rode the train for only three stops, then had to transfer to a bus for the next ten stops – which, being on the road in the traffic, took a long time!-- and then back on the train for the remaining distance. It took two and a half hours to get to Belgrave! Not exactly the early start I had imagined.

Grant's Picnic Ground is a well-known recreation spot near Belgrave. People come here to feed the birds and hence it is a good place to see a lot of parrots in one spot. If arriving by train there are two ways to get there. The first is just by taking the road, either by bus or by walking along the track which runs alongside. Back in 2007 which was the last time I was at the Dandenongs, I took the bus there and walked back (it's only about a forty minute walk). This time I took the other option, which is to walk the Cole's Ridge Track and after reaching the picnic ground to return via the Lyrebird Walk and Neumann's Track. The whole circle is called the Sherbrooke Loop and it is through forest the whole way, and all of that forest is lyrebird territory. I think the sign said it would take 2.5 hours or something like that (of course it took me all day because I was looking for birds along the way). There are more specific directions available on the internet, but basically after you get off the train you head onto the Old Monbulk Road (leave the train station by the left exit, following the sign for Puffing Billy), go downhill past the Puffing Billy station then uphill, across the Puffing Billy tracks, keep going uphill (getting quite steep), the paved road turns to dirt, and keep going until you find a big green water-tank and a gate with a sign on it which reads “maintenance vehicles and walkers only” – this is the start of the Cole's Ridge Track (just on your right will be another gate: that is where you come out after completing the loop).

There weren't a lot of birds to be seen along the way to be honest. Kookaburras were common and I got a bird-wave with brown thornbills and grey fantails, but that was about it. At Grant's Picnic Ground there were a lot of birds! Swarms of greater sulphur-crested cockatoos were mobbing the people while the smaller and more colourful crimson rosellas nipped in and out, their tuneful whistles contrasting with the cockatoos' fingernails-on-blackboard screeching. In amongst the cockatoos were several long-billed corellas. I concentrated on trying to get good photos of these but it wasn't until later that I realised they were a wild lifer! I have seen so many in captivity that I didn't realise I hadn't seen them in the wild before! It took a while to find some galahs but eventually I spotted some hanging out in the very top of a tree, minding their own business. Unusually there were no king parrots to be seen, so they remained un-ticked for now.

The return to Belgrave via the Lyrebird Walk and Neumann's Track was more productive than the walk from Belgrave. Near the start of the Lyrebird Walk, not far from the picnic ground, I came across a bird-wave which included an eastern spinebill, several eastern yellow robins, white-browed scrubwrens, brown thornbills, grey fantails, and a white-throated treecreeper. There was another bird in there as well which I'm sure was a pilotbird but I never got a proper look at it. That would have been a lifer so kind of frustrating. They are called pilotbirds because they follow around lyrebirds, feeding on the insects the larger bird disturbs (likened to a pilotfish and a shark). Further along I saw a grey shrike-thrush which is much nicer than the field guide would lead one to believe.

I had seen lots of signs of lyrebirds along the Lyrebird Walk (they scratch up the ground like chickens) and heard males displaying twice but not where I could find them. Male lyrebirds imitate other birds when they are displaying. If you've seen David Attenborough's clips you'll know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, go find a clip on youtube now! The way you know it is a lyrebird calling in the forest and not just some other random bird is because lyrebirds don't imitate just one bird – they imitate all of them, all at the same time! If you hear what sounds like ten kookaburras and half a dozen cockatoos and a flock of whipbirds all calling from one thicket – that's a lyrebird! If there's a chainsaw in there as well, well that's definitely a lyrebird! Albert's lyrebirds, found further north in Queensland, are even cooler because one of the birds they imitate is the satin bowerbird which sounds like R2-D2 – a displaying Albert's lyrebird sounds like every clip from every Star Wars movie playing simultaneously. I had seen quite a few Albert's lyrebirds at Lamington National Park in 2008 (including a displaying male) but the only superb lyrebird I had yet seen was in 2007 when I snuck up on a displaying male in the Blue Mountains near Sydney.

Lyrebirds are big birds, the size of pheasants even though they are passerines. They look so much like pheasants that the early settlers called them “native pheasants”. They are mostly dark brown in colour, but the male superb lyrebird has a long filmy white tail framed on either side by a pair of thick colourful feathers (called “lyres” from the name lyrebird). When the male is displaying he stands on top of a mound he has made by scratching all the surrounding earth into a low pile, and spreads all his tail feathers out, up and forwards so they cover him like an umbrella and fall forwards over his head with the two “lyres” framing the white filmy feathers (that is, he doesn't fan the tail vertically like a peacock's train). It is like watching him through a lace curtain.

Halfway along the Neumann's Track I heard a lyrebird calling from just inside the forest. I tried to work out where the best direction was, then headed in after him. I didn't think I would get much of a view – the view I had of the one in the Blue Mountains had been mostly blocked by a tree and when he realised I was there he had left rather quickly – but this time I was pleasantly surprised. I found the lyrebird without much trouble, but he was displaying on his mound deep inside a thicket. No good for photos but at least I could see him well enough through the binoculars. After a while I crept round the thicket to see if I could find a better position. He obviously knew I was there – it was difficult to walk quietly on the dry leaves! – but he kept on displaying. Around the other side I found a relatively clear view and even managed some photos! And I kept on watching him! It was just brilliant. I felt like David Attenborough! Then the reason for his insistence on the continuous display became obvious when a female lyrebird came stalking out of the undergrowth. She paused to examine my bag which I had left on the ground nearby, then circled around behind me and went into the thicket. The male got super excited and started literally jumping up and down on the spot. The female made a loop around his arena, examining his dance moves …. and then walked away! Not good enough! Immediately the male stopped what he was doing, and just walked off as well. Talk about a quick defeat. I followed him up the slope as he scratched around and looked for food, then watched (and took some photos) as he trotted across the road and departed stage left.

Best lyrebird sighting ever!

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