the biggest in a decade
200,000 Budgies
I’m terrible at keeping a secret, especially when its this good. So the first words I said to a group of mates as I picked them up from the airport were “the budgies are on”. The very next morning in the frigid dark we set off for a waterhole the location of which is a closely guarded secret. Don't tell anyone.
This isn’t the first time I’ve photographed a murmuration of budgies. My first was in 2012 then again in 2016 and each time the sight and sound of the event truly electrified the senses. Add to this sensory overload the absolute enjoyment of stirring up curious sideways looks and inquisitive conversations met with vague remarks and the anticipation in the group was palpable. I had promised them clouds of budgies, tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of birds all congregating just after dawn and dancing in the sky. They were not disappointed.
Few, if any Australians
would be unaware of the boom and bust nature of the outback. But until you have personally lived it, experienced the dry day in day out for years on end it could easily remain a distant concept. While I’m now based in Tasmania, I lived in Alice Springs for many years and spent much of that time in the wilderness. I was lucky to arrive in 2008 just at the end of an extended dry and on my third year tropical Cyclone Yasi uncharastically swept across the landscape from east to west. It seemed every slight depression, every parched river bed and waterhole hidden deep within the ranges suddenly burst to life. So began a time of abundance that as a relative newcomer to Alice I savoured but still might not have fully appreciated.
Fast forward to 2021 and if you were to ask anyone in Central Australia if last summer 20/21 was hot they would say it was pleasant compared to the summers of 2018/2019 and 2019/2020. The numbers from the Bureau of Meteorology tell us that these summers were vastly hotter. December January 2018/2019 produced 38 days over 40c, the same period for 2019/2020 produced 35 days over 40c. This level of constant extreme heat produced a “bust” period and had devastating effects on the wildlife of Central Australia.
One personal observation was the change to dawn chorus in the hills behind Alice. Previously great numbers of splendid fairy wrens were both a visual and audible feature. But even now as I go for my morning runs they just aren’t there anymore, I don’t have solid data to back this up but they were here and now they aren’t. Fairy wrens are notoriously territorial and that behaviour may have been a disadvantage during these extreme summers.
Nomadism is a critical strategy
that most of Australia's unique desert animals have chosen. Not being fixed to a defined territory combined with a suite of unique evolutionary adaptations for efficient movement over long distances means individuals can cover great distances to go to the water. Budgies are no exception. They can cover vast distances and migrate across the continent to where and food resources are.
You see the boom and bust might not be in the same phase all across the continent. Between Central Australia, the goldfields in western Australia and the Gulf country in Queensland its is likely that there is a pocket of boom in amongst the bust. Budgies will migrate to the resources on this content scale.
Vivid prints
a slice of the action just for you.
“old hollow baring trees are essential for their survival”
Seed eating birds like the budgie are well suited to upcycle the widely dispersed resource that is native grass seed. Spending most of the day away from water and in much smaller feeding flocks of 20-30 birds they gather up these nutrients from the broader landscape.
Like more than 90% of our Australian parrots Budgies are obligate hollow nesters meaning that they require tree hollows to nest. Each night as they nest in the hollows and roost in the upper branches of the gnarled river red gums. They drop what might seem a very small amount of dung. However, in years like this where it seems every suitable tree is covered in budgies that transfer of dispersed resources from the broader landscape can be concentrated at these nesting sites.
It could be hypothesised that an amount of coevolution has taken place between budgies and other parrots and our eucalypts. Individual trees that produce a greater quantity of hollows are utilised by a greater number of birds resulting in a greater amount of fertilising dung being delivered. The service the old, hollow bearing trees provide to the budgies is repaid by that deposition of fertiliser.
River Red Gum, Simpsons Gap, Alice Springs.
What would you see and feel if you approached the waterhole with us on that cold dark morning?
Well first of all we park a distance away so there is an amount of walking to be done through the talcum power one dust. Your exposed gloveless fingers would quickly let you know just hold cold it is. The sky is a seamless gradient of subtle dark blues to the west with the concentration of brighter warmer tones to the east. Once in position, we sit in silence waiting for that first trill to emanate from somewhere unseen. Moments later another, then a slow group of 20 birds passes over. Gradually a baseline soundscape of individually definable trills forms and those groups of 20 join to become greater and greater groups that still keep their distance.
Groups of 200 fly closer overhead and the gentle whoosh of one accumulates to now become a singular large object displacing the still air with a turbulent sweep. Ever sounding out their trills the sound of one becomes undefinable as many groups of 200 join over and over again.
You might look away for a second to comment to a friend and turn back only to see clouds of thousands moving as one still keeping their distance. The thousands fly just over the mulga and with each change in direction the density of the cloud increases in one area while thinning in another. The greater the number the darker the impression, the thinner the lighter Soon enough thousands have become tens of thousands now with just a constant white noise of trills and a turbulent sound something like a distant train.
It is now at this time of critical mass that they as one flowing endless object move in for their first drink. If you are within 30m of the funnel of birds successively twisting out of the main group to take their turn at the water edge you’ll feel it. The woosh of one, the turbulent sweep of 200, and the distant train-like rumble of tens of thousands bares down to become a constant. 360-degree source of bass-heavy roar. Combined with their trills now just a high pitch of constant white noise which in itself sweeps louder and closer as the formation now forms a ring around the waterhole.
There we sit in a forced silence witnessing the sight of one endless ever-shifting object overwhelmed by sounds that are unlike anything you’ll ever hear.
