Nick Bikeman
I first laid eyes on them in early September. They had migrated some 10,000ks or more, from somewhere in the Arctic Circle, or Alaska, flying all that way nonstop only to land at Laverton Creek in Altona. I can’t help feeling that it must be a bit of a disappointment and an anti-climax after having flown so far; however they do seem to enjoy life here in the western suburbs, with individual birds making the return journey several times over a number of years.
I’m in awe, captivated by the Bar-tailed Godwits, weighing in at a paltry 500 grams but able to undertake such an immensely perilous journey, arriving exhausted and hungry and then having to skirt about the mudflats eating worms and molluscs.
These last few months, while cycling about, I’ve often stopped to watch them on the tidal flats, as they thrust their long slender slightly curved beaks deep into grey soggy mud in search of a tasty morsel.
The birds move gracefully across the intertidal zone dressed in their ‘dullish brown’ non-breeding plumage, busy fattening themselves up for the coming return nonstop flight home and breeding season, where the males transform into a deep ‘red brick’ blood colour on the promise of dazzling a female. I watch the Godwits for hours through my binoculars, trying to capture the very essence of the bird, something I can never do.
I wonder if the Curlew Sandpipers, which share the glistening mudflats with a flock close by, might chirp in with a few words now and again, but I can’t see any turf wars. I guess the Curlew Sandpipers, being migratory birds themselves, subscribe to a live and let live view of the world.
The tide is coming in and it’s getting late, high time I cycled off to hunt up a tasty morsel of my own.
