18th Jul, 2024
Don Roberts’ knowledge of birdlife in his local area of Mooroopna is encyclopedic. It stretches back more than 50 years – tracing the seasons and the rhythms of wet and dry, but also the longer-term trends of climate change and species decline. It’s all reflected in Don’s daily bird recordings.
His local patch is Gemmill Swamp Nature Conservation Reserve, a beautiful wetland and river red gum forest just outside Shepparton. It’s one of the few remaining ephemeral wetlands in the area, with many others destroyed to make way for irrigation drainage. That’s why it’s such an important habitat and what makes it one of the area’s best bird-watching spots.
As Don explains, no two days of bird-watching are ever the same. “It’s always changing,” he says. “It changes with the seasons, and it changes whether it’s got water in the wetland or not.”
The forest’s big river red gums house resident forest birds like superb fairywrens and spotted pardalotes all year round, who forage for food and nest in the tree’s branches. When we visited, a few years of big rain and floods meant the wetland was full of water birds like gray teals and little pied cormorants. Migratory birds also visit Gemmill Swamp, like rainbow bee-eaters in summer and flame robins in the winter.
Don has lived in Mooroopna all his life and his current home backs onto Gemmill Swamp. In his retirement, he enjoys a two-hour walk through the wetland each day. He’s able to identify most birds in the area simply by their calls, spotting between 30 and 60 different species a day. A self-proclaimed “e-bird addict”, Don always uploads his checklists to the website, tracking sightings around Australia and the world.
He’s been recording bird sightings since he was 17, long before the technology to upload them to a website. But his fastidious record keeping meant he was able to go back and backdate more than 1,000 checklists – a gargantuan task that took more than eight months!
For Don, these historic records are vital for the conservation of birdlife. It’s helped show the decline of many species in the area, including eight that have become locally extinct like the white-browed babbler and hooded robin.
“It’s useful to tell politicians and public servants, ‘this is what was around in the sixties, seventies, and the early eighties, and this is what’s not here now.’”
Don believes habitat destruction has played a big part in this decline, but so has the burning of fossil fuels, resulting in a climate that’s becoming hotter and drier. “The biggest thing I’m worried about is climate change. And I’m seeing it through the birds,” he says.
River regulation is another factor affecting the health of wetlands and the birdlife that depend on them. Before British colonisation there was a natural cycle of wetting and drying. After big rains, water would rise up over the banks and into floodplain forests like Gemmill Swamp. Now dams and weirs control the flow of water, and rules prevent these natural flows from reaching the wetlands that need them.
So while Gemmill Swamp was full of water when we visited, it often misses out on the regular small and medium floods that used to flow more naturally to wetlands in the Goulburn Valley. Rules need to be changed to allow more water to flow to places like this, reconnecting the river with the floodplain.
Don is president of BirdLife Murray-Goulburn, which made a submission to the Victorian government’s report supporting these rule changes to allow more natural flows. The local group’s 160 members also meet monthly and do surveys of local spots including the Winton Wetlands and the Botanic Gardens in Shepparton. It’s a great way for people to contribute meaningfully to science, while also connecting with their local environment and with each other.
“It’s a wonderful hobby. I think if you don’t have healthy rivers, you’re not going to have healthy wetlands. Probably more importantly, you’re not going to have healthy people either.”
Photos from a bird-watching event Environment Victoria hosted in October together with Birdlife Murray-Goulburn, Goulburn Valley Environment Group and Shepparton Mooroopna Urban Landcare Group.