Rocky Bottom Creek at dawn
A bit of an experiment this.
A pesky, but nonetheless absolutely delightful Pied Butcherbird woke me at about 4 am the other morning while I was camped on the side of the aptly-named Rocky Bottom Creek about 450 kilometres into Arnhem Land along the Central Arnhem Road.
Me, being slack and nice and warm warm in my swag told the PBB to go away and rolled over to try for another hour or so of sleep.
Then, of course entranced by the PBB’s call – the first five notes of which reminded me very much of “La Cucaracha” – I thought I’d emulate my friend and colleague Hollis Taylor and get out of my warm fartsack and record their calls.
Hollis has spent large parts of the last few years getting up at ridiculous hours to record the many and varied dialects of the Pied Butcherbird’s calls from all over Australia and she has now put this all together in a PhD thesis and has apparently also just finished an ABC Radio documentary about her work.
I’m looking forward to reading more of her work and to hearing the doco.
But I digress.
By the time I got out of my swag, into my clothes and had a bushman’s breakfast of a piss and a look around, the PBB and its friends had flown away and left me with hordes of Orange-collared Lorikeets chattering like drunken schoolies in the trees overhead.
You can hear the edited version of a half hour or so of their calls HERE.
Note to self – next time – get ready the night before and get up earlier – before the PBBs fly away.
