We share a fascination with raptors and in her most recent message she said:

Solitary Hawk! LIFER! 4 million migrating raptors for this season – not bad and still expecting four hundred thousand Turkey Vultures…Veracruz – River of Raptors.

Photo: Mercy Njeri

Mercy has been chasing the annual migratory movements of millions of raptors through the northern continental Americas and is now in Veracruz – where there is literally an aerial River of Raptors.

The wonderful people at HawkWatch International tell me will give Mercy and all the other lucky souls great views of:

Each fall, 4-6 million raptors migrate through Veracruz on their way to winter ranges in Central and South America. Because of the region’s geography, raptors from eastern, central, and western North America converge, providing visitors with a display unequaled anywhere on the planet.

As many as 2 million Broad-winged Hawks, 1 million Swainson’s Hawks, and 200,000 Mississippi Kites–nearly the entire world population for these three species–pass through Veracruz each fall. In addition, more than 1.5 million Turkey Vultures join the flight, as do thousands of other raptors, waterbirds, and songbirds.

Combine this with the hundreds of resident bird species in the state of Veracruz, and the scores of Olmec, Totonac, and Aztec archeological sites, all set in the friendly, unspoiled culture of east central Mexico, and you have the adventure of a lifetime.

Anyway – back to the barbie.

As anyone who has spent time in Mexico or the south-western USA will know, Armadillos are relatively common, and, as this entry at Wikipedia says:

Armadillos (mainly Dasypus) make common roadkill due to their habit of jumping to about fender height when startled (such as by an oncoming car). Wildlife enthusiasts are using the northward march of the armadillo as an opportunity to educate others about the animals, which can be a burrowing nuisance to property owners and managers.

Roadkill Armadillo. Photo: Professional Wildlife Removal

Anyway, in Mercy’s travels in Veracruz someone came up with the idea of barbecuing a few Armadillos.

Photo: Mercy Njeri

Mercy says that she is a bit ambivalent about the experience – delicious but:

Spiced Armadillo…poa lakini…ni Bush Meat…though nilimanga…now I am a vegetarian by circumstances…

Shell yenyewe ni ka ya tortoise…ati no nyama…tuiohere mehia maitu nitondu tutiui uria tureka…!

Super delicious, better than Crocodile meat!

Mercy told me that:

I preferred not to look at what i was munching because it gave me memories of our endangered African Elephant Shrew found in the Arabuko Sokoke Forest!

The meal is typical of traditional Mexican food. Eaten by locals and cannot be found in the markets – only occasionally in the homes of the locals. These was brought for us by the father of one of my colleague’s from upcountry.

Mercy didn’t have a recipe – “It’s a Mexican secret!!” – but I found this one from the folks over at Backwoods Bound:

Bar-B-Q’d Armadillo

Thanks to Jason Hunter for sending this recipe.

~ 1 armadillo

~ bacon grease

~ 1 cup butter

~ 1/2 cup ketchup

~ 1/2 cup grated onion

~ 2 tbsp mustard

~ tabasco to taste

In a sauce pan, combine the butter, ketchup, onion, mustard and tabasco. Heat over low heat until the butter is melted. Stir occasionally.

Rub bacon grease into the armadillo.

Grill over a hot fire for 5 minutes.

Reduce the fire by half.

Baste the meat with the sauce until done. Armadillo is cooked like pork.

Serve and Enjoy!

Serve and enjoy indeed! Photo: Mercy Njeri

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.

Weebill. Photo by M Seyfort © Australian Museum

This great shot is of a Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris), bird of the week here at TNM, at one of their little woven dome-shaped nests with a neat side entry.

In many ways they are the archetypal “LBB” (little brown bird) that causes no end of frustration for no end of the birders that seek them in their natural habitat of the open woodland and forests that once dominated the Australian landscape.

Like many small birds, just about the best way to locate Weebills in the bush is to listen for their distinctive call then follow your ears. To hear the sweet call of the Weebill have a listen here to a great recording by Fred van Gessel.

You spend a lot of time fchasing the many similarly-sized and plumaged birds to Weebills around the scrub but you will also spend a lot of that time looking at Thornbills, Pardalotes, Silver-Eyes and small Honeyeaters with which they commonly form mixed-species feeding flocks.

And just maybe the occasional Weebill…

Weebills, at an average weight of a mere 6 grams in weight and a diminuitive average of 8 centimtres in length are reckoned by many to be the smallest of Australia’s birds.

Both their common and scientific names come from the primary morphological point of distinction from the other LBBs around the place – the stubby little beaks that are ideally suited to gleaning their favoured prey of small insects from and among the leaves and branches of forest trees.

Earlier today I was on what hopefully will become a semi-regular gig on the local ABC Radio Morning Show broadcast out of Alice Springs with my good pal Alice Brennan.

We’ve shared a few tips in her previous role as a news journalist and occasional radio producer and now she has stepped up a grade or two and is presenting on-air for a couple of hours a day, five days a week.

From what I’ve heard so far she’ll do a great job!

Anyway, we had a great yarn about Weebills for a few minutes – she played the call that I’ve linked in above and we did a quick “What Bird am I” Q & A.

One item we couldn’t squeeze into the allotted time today was the following story of the Weebill, the Emu, the Porcupine (Echidna) and some Meat Ants.

It tells of how the Echidna got it’s spines and was told by Arthur Dodd, one of the last speakers of the Yuwaalaraay language from the area in north-western New South Wales around Walgett.

For more information about the Yuwaalaraay (which is referred to as a dialect of Gamilaraay or Kamilaroi) language have a look here. There are also a number of school programs that use these languages in primary and secondary schools in Gamilaraay country.

There are a bunch of great stories at the Yuwaalaraay and Gamilaraay language home page, Guwaabal  here, which is where the following story comes from.

I’ve removed the interlinear translation for ease of reading.

Bigibila wiyayl – The Porcupine’s Quills

Bigibila yanaa-waa-nhi, biyaduul.

A porcupine was walking along by himself.

Bulaarr badjin mindjarru yanaa-waa-nhi.

Two little weebills were walking along. [Weebills are small birds about the size of a wren.]

(Giirr yilaalu nhama mindjarru, bigibila dhayn gi-gi-la-nhi.)

(A long time ago the weebills and porcupines were people.)

Milan-du mindjarru-gu gayawi-y barran-du nhama, dhinawan nhama.

One weebill threw a boomerang at an emu.

Giirr bundaa-nhi nhama dhinawan.

The emu fell down.

Bamba ngaama bundaa-nhi

It fell with a crash.

Bigibila-gu-bala winanga-y, guwaa-y,

The porcupine heard it, and he said:

“Aa, minya ngaama bundaa-nhi?

“Aa, what fell there?”

Bamba nhama bundaa-nhi?

It fell with a crash.

Bulaa-yu-bala mindjarru-gu nhama guwaa-y, “Waal, waal baayamba. Waal, baayamba.”

But those two weebills said, “No, no mate. Nothing mate.”

(Giirr bulaa-yu nhama gayrrba-lda-nhi “baayamba”

(The two of them used call him “baayamba, friend”.)

Giirr-bala nguu gaga-y “Waa, waa, waa, waa maaynndjul dhingaa.”

But he called out, “Waa, waa, waa, waa, lovely meat.”

Guwaa-lda-nhi nguu dhinawan-di bigibila nhalay

He was saying this about the emu meat, the porcupine.

Giirr gaa-nhi nguu nhama dhinawan

Then he took the emu.

Yilaa nguu nhama yilama-y nguu nhama dhawuma-y

Then he cooked it, cooked it in the ground.

Giirr nguu guwaa-y mindjarru girran.girraa dhiyama-li-gu

He told the weebills to get some leaves

Giirr guwaa-lda-nhi nguu:

He kept on telling them:

“Ngarraagulay-nga yanaa-ya, girran.girraa-gu, dhawuma-li-gu ngiyani dhinawan.”

“Go over there for leaves, so that we can cook the emu.”

“Ngaayaybaay ngaan.gii.”

Okay! all right! mate? “Okay, mate!”

Bulaa-yu guwaa-lda-nhi.

The two of them were saying.

Giirr banaga-y-la-nhi yurrul-gu, nhalay badjin-duul.

Those little fellows were running around the bush.

“Nhalay-gaa baayamba? ngaan.gii?”

“What about these, friend, mate?”

“Ngaangaarran-gu yanaa-ya.”

“Go further on.”

Nguu guwaa-lda-nhi, “Yanaa-ya!”

He kept on saying, “Go!”

Nhama bulaarr dhurra-y ngayagay-a maalaabidi-dja.

Those two came to another tree.

“Nhalay-gaa ngaan.gii?”

“What about these, mate?”

“Waal, ngaangaarran, ngaangaarran-gu!”

“No, further, further on.”

Yilaa-bala giirr nguu barraay dhinawan dhawuma-lda-nhi

But then he was quickly cooking that emu in a hole.

Yilaa dhinawan dhawuma-nhi.

Then the emu was cooked.

Dhinawan-bala nhama-nga dhuwima-y nguu, dhinawan ngaarrma, nyiyarrma nguu-nga dha-lda-nhi

Then he took that emu out, and he was eating that emu there.

Mindjarru-bala nhama dhaay-nga yanaa-w-uwi-nyi.

Then the weebills came back there.

“Yaama-nga ngaan.gii!”

“Hey, mate,

Giirr ngali-nga maayrr dha-lda-nha.

We’ve got nothing to eat.

Ngaa, gana-badhaay ngay wuu-na.”

Yeah, give me the liver.”

Bigibila-gu-bala guwaa-y:

But the porcupine said:

“Waa, waa, waa, waa; maayndjul dhinggaa!”

“Waa, waa, waa, waa; lovely meat!”

Dhugay nguu ngaama guwaa-lda-nhi.

He kept on saying that.

Waal-bala nguu dhinggaa wuu-dha-nhi nhama bulaarr-gu nhama badjin-gaali-gu

He wouldn’t give any meat to those two, the two little fellows.

Giirr nhama ngiilay yanaa-nhi, nhama bulaarr, badjin-duul.

The two went away from there, the little fellows.

Dhurra-y bulaarr gadhuu-ga

The two of them came to an ant nest.

(Giirr ganunga-bula dhayn gi-gi-la-nhi, nhama buurrngan.)

(At that time the meat ants were people too.)

Bulaa-yu guwaa-y nhama buurrngan-da:

The two said to the meat ants:

“Waal ngaan.gii-dju minyagaa ngalingu wuu-rri.

“Old mate won’t give us anything.

Waal nguu minyagaa ngay wuu-dha-nhi.

He hasn’t given me anything at all to eat.

Waal ngay gana wuu-nhi, waal ngay gii wuu-nhi.”

He didn’t give me the heart, he didn’t give me the liver.

“Ngaayaybaay,” guwaa-y nhama buurrngan-du.

“Okay! All right!” said the meat ants.

Giirr nhama buurrngan yanaa-w-aaba-y, bilaarr-iyaay.

The meat ants all went, with their spears.

Ngaa, ngaama-dhaay-nga ganunga, buurrngan yanaa-nhi.

Yep, they went there, the meat ants.

Nyiyarrma-nga ganugu bilaa-yu dhu-nhi nhama.

There they speared that fellow.

Bilaa-yu dhu-nhi, bilaa-yu dhu-nhi, aawu, burrulaa-gu.

Speared him and speared him, with a lot spears.

Giirr-nga nguu guwaa-y:

And then he said:

“Nginaalingu dhinggaa, nginu dhinggaa, nginu dhinggaa.”

“This meat is for you two, meat for you, your meat.”

Giirr nguu dhugay gaga-lda-nhi, “Waal, waal.”

He kept on calling out, “No, no.”

Yilaa-bala burrulaa bilaarr nguungunda wa-y-la-nha.

[Too late] But now lots of spears were sticking into him.

Nhama wiyayl nguungu, giirr nhama bilaarr gi-gi-la-nhi.

Those quills of his, they were those spears.

Yalagiyu bigibila yanaay-la-nha wiyayl-bil, bilaarr-bil.

And now the porcupine is covered with quills, covered with spears.

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/06/bird-of-the-week-mindjarru-bigibila-a-yuwaalaraay-story-by-arthur-dodd/feed/ 1 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/08/23/why-birds-culture-and-language-are-relevantand-interesting/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/08/23/why-birds-culture-and-language-are-relevantand-interesting/#comments Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:30:20 +0000 Bob Gosford http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/?p=1599 This is a bit of a riff on what I’ve been up to over the past few months…and what will keep me busy for a few more months yet…

This is a not-so-short update on the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Island bird knowledge project I’ve been working on for – well, years now.

My initial interest in this topic was prompted by spending time with Aboriginal people soon after I moved to the Top End of the NT in the mid-eighties – it was soon apparent to me that Aboriginal people had a wealth of knowledge about the birds that they hunted and ate and celebrated in dance, song and art and that forms a rich thread running through their mythology, traditions and culture.

Fifteen years, a law degree and a temporary move to the south coast of NSW later I finally got to attend the post-grad certificate course at Charles Sturt University at the Thurgoona campus at Albury. There I asked lecturer, course coordinator and general all-round great guy Dr Dave Watson if he might have some thoughts about what to do about the apparent lack of appreciation of the knowledge and appreciation of Aboriginal birdknowledge by ‘mainstream’ (for want of a better term) birdwatchers and ornithologists.

Dave’s answer was short and sweet – “Well Bob, if no-one else has done it you’d better do it yourself!”. Little did I know what lay in store by my simple response that I’d do my best!

A telling fact that drove my interest in the early nineties was that the most substantial single source of Aboriginal bird knowledge in the mainstream ornithological literature was John Gould’s “Handbook to The Birds of Australia”, published in 1865. I’ve not been able to find a replacement candidate as the primary source – and much of the information contained therein was collected by one of Gould’s collectors, John Gilbert, who was taken from us too soon in 1845 while on a cross-country expedition with Ludwig Leichhardt.

Anyway, eight years on from Dave’s wise words I’m getting closer to producing my attempt at an overview of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander bird knowledge in a single volume. CSIRO Publishing will publish the book (with a tentaive and somewhat boring working title of “Australian Aboriginal Bird Knowledge”) in mid to late 2010 – dependent upon when I get the finished work to them.

One thing I do note is that it will not, indeed cannot, be a complete compendium of such knowledge – that would take more time and many more volumes than I have time for. But what I do hope is that it will start a broader interest and enquiry about local bird knowledge among the many distinct language groups and cultural blocs around the country – particularly in light of the growing importance of Aboriginal land management in many part of Australia.

I’ve spent a large part of the last five years (at least) collecting the literature – mainly from many hours in dusty (and not so dusty) libraries across Australia and across the globe (I’ve found some great works in libraries in Cambridge, Cape Town, Arkansas and New Orleans, to name a few), and have a stack – literally – of secondary research material.

What has occupied a large part of my time this year is organising and doing what I think will be the most important part of the book – travelling around the country talking to any Aboriginal person or group with an interest in taking part in my project. So far I’ve done a few trips up and down the NT – into the southern fringes of Arnhem Land – where I lived for a while in the eighties and nineties, around and to the west of Katherine and up and down the Stuart Highway.

I’ve also been into the east Kimberleys, South Australia (twice) and have just returned home here to Yuendumu (300 kilometres n-w of Alice Springs) from my latest trip that took me through eastern South Australia, coastal Victoria, southern and north-western NSW and central and western Queensland – a total of about 10,000 km.

In a week or so I’ll take off up the Tanami Track via Balgo and surrounds, then back into the eastern Kimberley, across to Broome and then down to the Pilbara – then back along that same route – that should take me the best part of a month.

After a week or so at home I’m planning a route that will take me up the Stuart Highway to just south of Katherine, where I’ll take the Central Arnhem Road via Wugularr, Bulman, Gapuwiyak to the heartlands of Yolngu culture around n-e Arnhem land. Then I hope to travel across through to Raminging and Maningrida in central Arnhem Land then back through Kakadu to Oenpelli and Jabiru. Depending on time and inclination I’ll either swing towards Darwin or south via katherine and the Barkly, eventually ending up here at Yuendumu for a few days.

By then it should be sometime in early November and I’ll turn my wheels eastward – if I’m lucky with time and weather I’d like to travel back into Queensland via the Plenty Highway – so much shorter, but rougher – than travelling via Tennant Creek and the Barkly) to Boulia – then back through s-w Queensland towards n-w NSW – eventually ending up in Walgett where I hope to spend some time again with the Dhariwaa Elders Group.

Then to the Australasian Ornithological Conference in Armidale in late November and early December. Then back through coastal northern NSW, up the coast to (about) Townsville then back across the NT and home.

That will be just about all of the field trips for this year – I have a couple of trips – by air – to Tasmania via Melbourne (to catch up on the excellent resources in the several libraries there) and then in mid- January hopefully to be in the Torres Strait islands about the same time that Dr Rohan Clarke from Monash Uni will be doing some field work there. And I may have a short road trip down to western South Australia and another up to the Gulf country.

And then – sitting down for a couple of months and putting it all together into some sort of shape that people – will want to read – and hopefully and more importantly – buy.

Finally, I’ve learned a lot about methodology for ethnobiology over the past that I hope to apply in a more specific PhD project looking at the application of local bird knowledge to local conservation and land management efforts here in the Tanami. And I’ll be talking about methodology at AOC 2009 in Armidale and at the back-to-back conferences of the International Society of Ethnobiology and Society for Ethnobiology which will be held on the magnificent Vancouver island in British Columbia in May next year.

And by the way – if you are interested in having a look at a great set of posters (that I’ve written about earlier here) in for central Australian languages have a look at the set of posters that my friend and colleague Myfany Turpin, of the University of Queensland and the Charles Darwin University School for Policy and Social Research, has produced. The series of posters are of bird knowledge in the Arrernte, Anmatyerr, Alyawarr and Kaytetye languages spoken throughout central Australia.

Individually they portray 25 or so birds found in the areas in which each language is spoken. As a set they reveal the depth of knowledge that Aboriginal people have of the birds that they hunt, share campsites and townships with and which are spiritually important or are involved in or related to traditional ceremonies and beliefs.
If you want any further information about my project please send an email to birdknowledge@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to send an Information Sheet or answer – as best I can – your queries. And please feel free to pass this email on to anyone you think might be interested in this project.

Cheers and I may see you on the road over the next few months.

Of the hundreds of highway death scenes I’ve stopped at over the years this latest would qualify as one of the worst and most distressing.

Ten days or so ago I was driving homewards up the single-lane strip of bitumen that passes for a highway in this part of the world and had pulled off onto the red dirt verge to allow a roadtrain to pass.

That truck was just one of the many 140-tonne, four-trailer behemoths that do the 1100 kilometre round trip up the Tanami Track from Alice Springs carting diesel fuel, cyanide and other essentials to The Granites mine.

You always get off the road for those guys.

One hundred metres up the road I noticed a common indicator of a recent bird killing zone – for 100 metres or so the ground and short grass alongside the road was littered with downy feathers,with a scatter of larger feathers blowing around in the stiff breeze.

I stopped, got out of the car and looked about me.

In the middle of the road was a large, slowly congealing pool of blood, with large splatters indicating that whatever – most likely a large kangaroo – had died here and had been hit by an inbound vehicle.

There was no sign of any kangaroo carcass close handy – maybe some caring driver or a hungry Dingo had dragged it off the road and well into the scrub, thus saving a few more birds from an untimely death.

As I looked at this scene more closely the true horror  of what had happened emerged. All about me lay  the scattered, shattered remains – here the severed head shown above, there a leg – stripped of flesh, next to the road another head, ten feet away a razor-taloned foot, wing and tail – this time of a younger bird.

An open-air slaughter house – whatever had happened here had been brief and incredibly brutal – two  Wedgetailed Eagles had been hit and torn – literally – limb from feathered limb, ground into paste on the road and left for the carrion-eaters.

The horror, the horror.

I can say no more – let my pictures bear witness and tell their own story.

Through town, aross the creek, and follow the signs past the old car and the Boab tree to...

I was in Katherine earlier last week with a few days to spare – I thought about going out south-west of Katherine to Yarralin and some other small towns in the Victoria River district to catch up with some old people to talk about birds but decided to head further west and pushed on to Kununurra and points south-west…

Kununurra holds little interest for me – it is all a bit too new and expensive. There is a nice man-made lake near the town and it attracts hordes of the increasing numbers of grey nomads that spend their winter months in the north dragging around enormous caravans behind near-new four wheel drives at a constant speed of about 80 km/h.

They clog up the roads, caravan parks and roadside stops where they spend their time talking to other grey nomads talking about the high price of fuel, the many and various techniques for fettling a caravan and the many variations on bumper stickers that trumpet “Don’t tell the kids, Mum and Pop on the run with their inheritance” and similar.

Enough of them.

Anyway, I camped outside of Kununurra near to one of the afore-mentioned roadside stops where that other scourge of the dry-season roads of the north – the backpackers cruising around in “Wicked” campervans – did their best to have a rave party a hundred metres or so away from my camp while the moon rose through the trees and the cattle road trains thundered westwards in search of a load.

The next day and a couple of hundred of kilometres later I found myself in Warmun – previously known as Turkey Creek – which flows through the town.

Warmun is a on small excision (as we would know it in the NT) cut out from the surrounding cattle station.

Most people in the community are from the Gija language group that owns (at Aboriginal law at least) a large area surrounding the township.

With a fluctuating population of about 500 in Warmun and another few hundred people living at homeland communities serviced by the town, is one of the largest Aboriginal communities in Western Australia.

Gija people appear to have taken a refreshingly strategic approach to economic development in their region .

Driving the 200-plus kilomreres down from Kununurra the only services along the route is the Aboriginal-owned Doon Doon Roadhouse and the local caravan park and roadhouse in Warmun – only place to stay in town – is also owned and operated by Gija people.

Both are dry – so if you want a drink you have a long way to north to Kununurra or south to Halls Creek to quench a thirst.

Warmun Art centre gallery

And the Warmun Arts Centre is also locally owned, operated and easy to find – drive through town, across Turkey Creek and past the old rusty car and the ancient Boab tree, follow the signs and there you are at a new(-ish), large and light-filled gallery of local art.

I’ve not had a lot to do with art from the east Kimberley and was unaware that most (all but the prints) of the material produced at Warmun is based on locally-sourced and coursely-ground ochres.

This gives a wonderful rough texture to each of the paintings and some beautiful tones – particularly the variations from the red and yellow ochres of the area, which provide a wide range of colours – from soft pastel washes to a wide range of hard browns and reds that are particularly effective on the landscape paintings.

Warmun has been running as an Art Centre since 1998 but local people have been painting publicly since the late nineteen seventies and the walls of the public buildings, particularly the local school, are covered in a wide and vibrant range of images.

Apparently a lot of this earlier work has been collected for a local museum with support from the Australian National Gallery in Canberra. I’ll try to catch up with that collection when I pass through Warmun again later in the year.

The main reason for my travel to Warmun was to get a better look at the work of, and make contact with several of the local artists who paint bird stories grounded in the local landscape and culture.

Thanks to the staff at the Arts Centre I was able to get a better idea of who paints bird stories at Warmun and a better idea of the number of species that locals paint the stories of. I’ll be in touch with the artists through the local Council and the Arts Centre to arrange my next trip.

And if you want to find out more about the extraordinary artists – both past and present – and their art go to the Warmun Arts Centre site here – and if you contact the Arts Centre they’ll tell you where the several exhibitions planned for later this year.

You need a permit to enter the Warmun community living area and the Arts Centre – but if you call (08) 9168 7496 it is easy enough to arrange over the phone.

Fittingly the dead marsupial on the cover is a…you’ve got it, a Red Kangaroo, Macropus rufus.

Roadkill is a modest book by Len Zell, an Honorary Associate of the School of Environmental Sciences and Resource Management at the University of New England. Roadkill runs to 102 pages but is packed with interesting stuff – particularly for the newbie roadkiller.

Dealing with dead animals always contains a degree of risk, and I love Zell’s disclaimer at the front of Roadkill. Zell says that he:

…accepts no responsibility for any loss, inconvenience, injury, or feeling of angst, disgust or nausea sustained by any person using this book. All recipes are tongue-in-cheek and anyone considering using them should only use meat obtained from safe sources, as roadkill is likely to be infested with parasites and other not-so-clean aspects.

Okay, it seems that Len Zell has found that rarest of creatures – a lawyer who can write a funny legal disclaimer!

But more seriously, this little book is packed with all sorts of useful (and some irreverent and funny) suggestions.

These include a definition and scope of the roadkill problem, how to avoid killing things as much as possible and, perhaps most importantly, and wise advice about what to do with roadkill and being aware of the worst case scenarios:

If an animal comes clean through the windscreen, e.g. a kangaroo, they can kill you or your passenger should you be going fast enough. Once inside the car the frightened animal may be still able to try to get out and in the process destroy or damage the occupants or a car’s interior. There is very little you can do in this circumstance other than stopping the car, opening the doors and hoping.

…

To swerve or not to swerve – the answer is simple: DO NOT SWERVE unless you are going slowly enough to be able to maintain complete control of the car.

…If you see or hit an animal on the road, ensure that it is dead before moving on.

All good advice. The rest of the book is a sort of taxonomy of roadkill – the ’spineless’, the ‘wet and dry’, the ’scaly’, the ‘big flying feathered’, the ‘hairy warm’ and the ‘feral’ roadkill. Then follows a useful list of contacts and websites, a Bibliography and, what is a sad rarity in too much of Australian non-fiction, an index for handy cross referencing.

If you work in animal rehabilitation, spend long hours behind the wheel driving across the wide open roads of this wonderful country or are just interested in roadkill I can highly recommend this book for your bookshelf or glovebox.

Roadkill will come in handy when next you run into a Black Kite as it lifts, engorged with rotting flesh and on struggling wings, off a carcass on the roadside – or when you run into a wombat, a snake, a horse…you get the drift.

You should be able to find the book at most good booksellers – but please take the time to buy it, and all of your books, from an independent bookstore.

Or you can try the publisher, Wild Discovery Guides here.

Individually they portray 25 or so birds found in the areas in which each language is spoken. As a set they reveal the depth of knowledge that Aboriginal people have of the birds that they hunt, share campsites and townships with and which are spiritually important or are involved in or related to traditional ceremonies and beliefs.

The homepage for the “Birds that Tell People Things” project notes that:

In many cultures birds indicate things in the environment and can be harbingers of bad news through their role in mythology. Birds can signal where water can be found, the presence of game or other food, seasonal events, as well as danger or bad news. This series of posters features birds that indicate ecological and social events in four Central Australian Aboriginal languages: Arrernte, Anmatyerr, Alyawarr and Kaytetye. Each poster includes a photograph of the bird, its Aboriginal, scientific and common name, and information about what it signifies with an English translation.

The posters are the result of collaborative work with highly-skilled Aboriginal language speakers, ornithologists and linguists. They are produced by the Cultural Signs Project, based at the School for Social Policy and Research, CDU.

The posters are the first output of the Charles Darwin University “Cultural Signs of Central Australia” project that will:

…document cultural signs in Central Australian Aboriginal languages. These are the social and environmental indicators used by Aboriginal people in Central Australia. For example there are signs that tell people when food is available, predict the weather, warn people of bad events and signal when certain kin are coming. Much of this knowledge is in danger of being lost as Aboriginal society rapidly changes. Many Aboriginal people are concerned that such knowledge should be documented and that resources should be created to assist in the teaching of this knowledge.

I was lucky enough to have a few of my bird photographs included on the posters and I’m more than pleasantly surprised by how well they came out. I’m also pleased at the quality and care taken in this project and the quantity and detail of local Aboriginal knowledge contained in each poster.

These posters deserve to be widely appreciated and used and I hope that many more will be produced – not only for other Northern Territory languages but for other languages across Australia. I think that the posters will be very useful to inform the general public of the depth and nature of traditional bird knowledge, as a tool for land management programs on country and also for use in schools.

Turkey Vulture Cathartes aura

The Turkey Vulture is a common bird in the south of the United States and has a range from southern Canada to the tip of the southern American continent – though for reasons unknown to me it is not found in that part of the central Misssissippi delta that I’ve been in for the last week or so. We found this bird soaring over a nature reserve south of Cleveland earlier this week.

Turkey Vultures have many of the typical characteristics of vultures – they only eat carrion, have a bare fleshy head and acute sight that allows them to spot carrion from a substantial distance.

One characteristic of Turkey Vultures that is unusual among birds is that they have a very strong sense of smell that enables them to locate their dead and decaying food that might otherwise be obscured from sight within forests.

Clumsy when on the ground, these birds are beautiful to watch when soaring on a thermal or on the wind and characteristically have a swinging or jinking flight when lower to the ground or in forested areas. At height their flight is effortless and they cover large areas looking for food.

I have a couple of reference books on American Indian legends and stories in my library at home in Yuendumu but, as I’m in Baton Rouge I can’t get to them – so for now here is some information I found at Paul Frost’s page:

In American Indian mythology, it was believed that the sun was originally much closer to the earth & was in danger of burning it up. First the fox unsuccessully tried to pull the sun away in its mouth, accounting for the black inside of its mouth. Next the opossum unsuccessully tried to pull the sun away with its tail, accounting for the hairless tail. Finally a beautiful fully feathered vulture successfully pushed the sun away from the earth with its head, thus becoming bald for eternity.

The Pueblo Indians believed the vulture to be a symbol of purification, using the feathers of the Turkey Vulture to remove evil influences from people & objects.

The return of the Turkey Vulture after winter was believed to signify the end of frosts. They often return to their summer feeding grounds precisely on the Vernal Equinox, the winter migration often starts around the Autumnal Equinox.

Wearing a feather of a Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus – meaning “vulture dressed in black”) was believed to prevent rheumatism.

Turkey Vulture bowl. Nat'l Museum of the American Indian

Paul also notes that he has:

…come across two meanings for the scientific name, Cathartes aura. Both take the first part as deriving from the Greek “katharsis” meaning to purify or to cleanse. One meaning takes the second part to derive from the latin “aureus” meaning golden, so the full name meaning “golden purifier“. The other definition takes the second part to derive from the greek “aura“, meaning breeze, so the full name meaning “cleansing breeze“. I can find no definitive confirmation of which is correct. One other translation takes the first part to mean “pacifier“, but I can find no alternate derivation & it is stretching the commonly used meaning of catharsis.

…government officials at the local, state and federal level came under criticism for poor planning and preparation. On August 28, the Louisiana National Guard delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MREs (meals ready to eat), enough to supply 15,000 people for three days. There was no water purification equipment on site, no chemical toilets, no antibiotics and no anti-diarrheals stored for a crisis. There were no designated medical staff at work in the evacuation center. There was no established sick bay within the Superdome, and there were very few cots available that hadn’t been brought in by evacuees. The mayor of New Orleans had, in fact, stated that as a “refuge of last resort,” only limited food, water, and supplies would be provided. Residents who evacuated to the Superdome were warned to bring their own supplies.

I got into New Orleans late last night after a long series of flights disrupted by industrial action at Sydney airport on Monday morning and, by night at least, there was very little visible sign left here of the chaos caused by Katrina – now the real cause of chaos in the US is it’s faltering economy…but that is another story entirely.

I’m here to attend at and present at the 32nd Society of Ethnobiology conference at Tulane University in New Orleans. This year’s conference theme is “Food: Crops and Noncrops” and while, in keeping with the conference theme most papers to be presented are related to food, the subject of my paper will be the Bird-man cult of Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

I will examine the re-discovery, in western eyes at least, of the Bird-Man Cult of Easter Island -
familiar to contemporary Chileans as “El Ritual del Hombre-Pajaro.”
I will briefly discuss the history of this cult and associated ceremonies, the ‘re-discovery’ of the cult by the
English gentlewoman explorer Katherine Routledge and the debates and discussions that have followed from
her work, including various re-interpretations of her original findings and research. I shall also examine the
contemporary role of the Hombre-Pajaro in in Chilean and Rapa-Nui culture and briefly discuss similar ‘bird-
man’ cults and ceremonies celebrated elsewhere in the Pacific and Polynesia.

I’m looking forward to quite a few of the presentations – the abstracts are available here. I’m particularly interested in the paper from Jami Wright from Western Washington University on the reintroduction of the Wolf Canis lupus in Idaho. There the local Nez Perce first nations group were actively involved in the reintroduction of the Wolf – a move fiercely opposed by the Idaho state government, which sided with the powerful interests of local ranchers and hunters.

Another interesting presentation comes from Dana Lepofsky, Felice Wyndham and Sara Tiffany and they look at the roles and relationships between the two international ethnobiology societies (the Society of Ethnobiology and the International Society of Ethnobiology) and report on a 2008 survey of the members of both societies.

Though we share a surprising number of members, the two societies fulfill different roles in ethnobiology-the SoE has an academic emphasis and draws most members from North America and anthropological traditions while the ISE strives to be a meeting ground for all stake- holders internationally and draws more biologists. Both societies need to increase efforts at reaching young/ student ethnobiologists. 61% of SoE and 87% of ISE respondents favor collaboration between our societies. We present possibilities and invite discussion on how to build synergies between these societies to leverage the insights and applications of ethnobiology to contemporary ecological and social issues.

Gregory Forth’s observations on ‘crypto-species’ from Flores in eastern Indonesia will also be on my list of must-see presentations – not just because it is research conducted close to home but also because some of the same considerations arise in an Australian Aboriginal context:

Despite the occurrence of zoological crypto-species in folk biological classifications, rarely have ethnobiologists
considered these in any detail. ‘Crypto-species’ refers to animal categories recognized by local peoples which
are not attested by scientific zoology and are not readily explicable (or easily explained away) as spiritual
beings or purely or largely imaginary entities.

Following the conference I’m looking forward to spending a week driving up to Cleveland in Mississippi to spend some time with my friend Mark Bonta from the Delta State University in Cleveland and spending some time learning how to love grits, chitlins and other culinary delights (?) of the south.

I’ll try my best to keep my posts regular and interesting – lots more to come!