Australian Birdfair

This weekend I’m in Leeton, New South Wales, to be a guest speaker at the 2010 Australian Birdfair. This fabulous event is organised by BOCA (Bird Observation and Conservation Australia) and I was thrilled when coordinator Mike Schultz phoned to invite me along!

On Friday I am conducting a workshop to build hides and talk about wildlife filmmaking with kids from some local primary schools. Then on Saturday the birdfair begins - lots of seminars about bird research, education programmes and other areas of interest for those liking our feathered Australians! I'm giving a talk about Wedge-tailed Eagles and filmmaking, to share some of the research I've done o the species in the past, and show some footage taken during this year for the film myself and Adam Hermans are working on, called A Wedged Tale.

The above photo of two feuding Sulphur-crested Cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) was taken on a short birding walk with Stuart Rae near the Murrumbidgee River. I love the character of cockatoos - always up for a play-fight or a game. Much like many of the keen environmental people I'm lucky to know or be friends with!

Patience Pays Off

After more than 10 hours concealed in a wildlife hide, Adam and I struck wildlife photography gold today when we were lucky enough to film a family of Australian Shelducks (Tadorna tadornoides) emerging from their nest hollow. This marks the highlight of my year so far making A Wedged Tale and one of the highlights of my life!

During a misty morning in WA's south-west we were driving along a small dirt track when a male Shelduck caught my attention. He was walking around at the base of a Powderbark tree which had a large dead trunk and a couple of smaller regrown saplings. Ducks are normally found near water and I knew the only reason one would be in the middle of the forest was for nesting. Like several native Australian ducks, Shelducks often choose a large hollow inside a tree in which to lay their eggs. I stopped the car and climbed out to investigate, and sure enough the dead tree contained a nice hollow spout about 5 metres above the ground. Closer inspection not only revealed a nest inside the hollow, but a female duck sitting on her eggs! As I took a photograph of her, I heard faint cheeping sounds which told me she was in fact sitting on a brood of newly hatched ducklings. This meant only one thing: the ducklings were due to emerge and we had to film them!

Adam and I sprang into action and constructed 2 hides within 20 metres of the nest tree, one directly facing the hollow and another off to one side. This would give us two positions from which to shoot different camera angles.

A six hour wait ended in disappointment, however, when the day passed and nothing exciting happened. The male duck returned (we had disturbed him on arrival) and perched in a tree for a while (a sitting duck!), but there was no sign of the female. Feeling like we'd missed out, we returned to our camp with sore bums and imagining the ducklings coming out under the cover of darkness, conditions not suitable for filming.

We decided to return before sunrise the next morning and were very excited to find the male at the base of the nest tree, and the female still inside brooding. We had a second chance! Adam and I dived into our hides again and after a short wait the female began emerging and investigating the scene before here. We hoped the family would hold off their annual event until light conditions improved enough for our cameras to work properly, and for the low-lying mist of Day 2 to subside and stop fogging up our lenses at those critical moments. Thankfully, the sun penetrated the forest, the fog lifted and the timing couldn't have been better for the big moment.

Here's the clip to share with you this wonderful moment:

Down Come the Ducks from Simon Cherriman on Vimeo.

Pigeon Film

Recently I've spent alot of time in the top of an amazing Rimu tree, not far from Dunedin, as part of a short film project for uni. The tree is an ancient NZ relic and takes me back to a time when such incredible beings carpeted the landscape, back before the country was tamed by westerners and cleared for agriculture. From the canopy I could see all over the small patch of forest, and watch closely as Kereru (Woodpigeons) foraging on fruit nearby. This allowed me to build a hide (which I took a time lapse of) and obtain some close shots of the birds feeding, both of which were vital components for the film.

Here's the finished product!



Kereru from Simon Cherriman on Vimeo.

Climbing Karris

Today I installed another Black Cockatoo nesting box, this one on my friend Jeff's block, which adjoins the Porongurup National Park just east of Mount Barker in Western Australia's south-west. Jeff and I made the box from his Nanna's old wardrobe, and some off-cuts of form-ply that I salvaged from a rubbish collection, earlier this year, and today headed south to put it into the wild. We selected a tall Karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor) in which to place the box and I set up ropes to haul it into place.

The Cockatoo nest-box is hauled up using a locking pulley system.

Drizzly rain covered our campsite soon after the box had been secured, so we took refuge under a camp shelter and drank some port as the afternoon turned to evening. Just before dark, we noticed a pair of Carnaby's Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus latriostris) sail in and land next to a small, slit-like entrance to a hollow in another Karri tree, close to where the nest-box had been installed. Our friends Graham and Kerry were also down camping with us and the four of us watching through drizzly showers as the pair perched near the tree-hollow, with rain dripping off their slender bodies.

Continued observation led us to learn this pair actually had a small chick inside, which we heard them feeding that evening, and again the next morning - a super exciting discovery! Hopefully this breeding activity means the prospects of our new nesting box becoming occupied by this endangered cockatoo are high!

Camping with friends and is a great way to spend the end of the year.

Cockatoo Box

Today I celebrated the beginning of August by installing a giant nest box, designed for Black Cockatoos, in a tall Eucalypt at home. I built the box a few days ago and it’s been sitting on the driveway by our garage. I laughed when I looked out my bedroom window one morning to see a pair of Australian Wood Ducks inspecting it for a nest site! Some animals don’t waste any time in taking up accommodation!

The installation process took a few hours: I had to get my climbing ropes high into the treetops, then set up a huge pulley system to gradually haul the box into place, inches at a time, to its final place at about 15 m. The box weighs about 20 kg so I had to make sure it was fixed properly!

This box is the second of it’s kind that I’ve made from totally recycled form ply, old nails and screws. It measures 1.2 m deep and the base is about 300 mm square. The important thing is to install a ‘ladder’ on the inside so any birds wishing to enter can climb inside and out again without any trouble. I made mine from an old gate to a chicken coop that had quite thick mesh, cut into three pieces and fixed using bent over nails. I was careful to not leave any pieces of wire sticking out because birds could easily cut themselves on this. Some people prefer to use wood but I know that cockatoos would chew this to pieces!

It will be very lucky if any cockatoos use it as Carnaby’s rarely nest this close to Perth, and Red-tails usually have the same nest site for years, but at least the box is in place if they do need it. Let’s keep an eye on it and see what wildlife does move in :-)