Fragile Lives
Reflections on extinction
As I write this, I can hear a bird call. It’s an insistent, high-pitched ‘peep’, which could belong to any bird except that it comes from a thicket of weeds along the fence line. Not many birds would hide in such a tangle. This is where the snakes live.
It could belong to any bird, but close up the call reveals its weirdness. The ‘peep’ is accompanied by a deep percussive ‘whoop’. The sounds occur at the same time.
This piccolo-and-bass-drum bird is a Buff-banded Rail, a species that occurs from the Philippines and Borneo to Tuvalu and Niue in the western Pacific. Each island or island group has a variation. In Australia (subspecies mellori), the rail occurs mostly around the continent’s edge, rarely wandering far inland. It is a bird of swampy sedges and overgrown gardens…and snake-infested thickets.
Although described as ‘sneaky’ by eBird, Buff-banded Rail can be tame and confiding in some locations, especially islands where there are fewer predators. But the pair in my garden are cautious. They don’t tarry on the lawn where they could fall prey to Brown Goshawks. Instead, they scuttle between the dense trees on one side and the dense weeds on the other. A cluster of Golden Cane Palms in the middle of the garden provide cover on the way. I hear the birds more often than I see them. What eBird calls…
