The Call of the Dry Season: Tooth-billed Bowerbirds

Once the rain stops, the birds get busy

Tooth-billed Bowerbird (as Toothed-billed Bower-bird from Gould’s ‘The Birds of New Guinea and the adjacent Papuan Islands including many new species recently discovered in Australia’). Public Domain.

Well, there you have it. Predicting the end of the wet season is like hanging out the laundry or washing the car.

The wet season is over, I said.

Next minute…

More than 150 mm (6 in) of rain has fallen since I made my bold statement about a fortnight ago, most of it coming down in the past two days. None of this is unusual. Not the rainfall, and certainly not my emphatic statements being immediately contradicted by reality.

Still, the Pacific Koels and Channel-billed Cuckoos have left, the Sulphur-crested cockatoos and White-headed Pigeons have moved in, and the Golden Pendas are in flower — although they are looking a little battered by the rain. Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes and Lewin’s Honeyeaters are eating the mulberries as soon as they ripen. Back in the rainforest, I’d be competing with Spotted Catbirds for fruit on the Millaa Millaa Vine (Elaeagnus triflora). The catbirds would usually win. Being able to fly is a definite advantage when dealing with plants that scramble into the canopy.

Even if the rain continues — and it will for a while — things are about change. And this is the time I wish I were back in the rainforest.