Part Eighteen: Disappearances and Returns

It is now mid-June as I write this and at last we are experiencing cooler weather. Usually with the onset of Banggerreng in March, the rain clouds slowly begin to disappear during April and the oppressive conditions of the wet season begin to diminish to cooler night temperatures and bearable daytime living.

Not so this year as it was not until 25 May that we woke to a wonderful energising temperature of 25?C. With almost no humidity and a stiff south-easterly wind, it completed the transformation from the Wet to the Dry. It was just cool enough to bring a slight shiver to our heat-dulled senses. The time of Yegge (May/June) has arrived. The fluffy cumulus clouds have mostly gone and the progression to dry, searing heat and vast blue skies has commenced. Late, admittedly, but we look forward to cold (winter) nights.

This late transition of seasons did bring some interesting changes to my HappHazzid garden and surrounding area.

In a previous episode, I wrote of the early disappearance of frogs from my garden even though I had supplied water containers and other inducements to encourage them to stay around. Our flock of resident ibis had also taken wing to parts unknown.

In 'The Case of the Missing Frogs', it was all to do with their need to find a quiet, cool, damp, safe possie (away from lawnmowers, blowers, whipper snippers etc) enabling them to survive the coming six or so waterless months ahead. Normally frogs will have completed their contribution towards procreation (and thus the continuation of the frog species) during our wetter months. This universal activity usually spans the period of December to April here in the tropics – the main monsoon months. Come Banggerreng frogs begin their search for cool, damp 'hibernating' spots.

Because of a lack of adequate monsoon rains this Wet (global warming ?), most frog colonies seemed to depart earlier than normal to burrow into the soft, moist places on their annual get-away holiday calendar.

As for the disappearance of the ibis, a similar reason prevailed. Because the automatic watering system in this complex is always turned off at the mere hint of rain, and because we received so little rain, no self-respecting worm, insect or beetle remained as surface fodder for the big birds. I also think that the ground was too hard for their long, slender beaks to penetrate, so greener pastures such as Fogg Dam or the Arnhem floodplains beckoned. I must admit it was actually quite strange to see the grass turn brown during a wet season.

Anyhow, it was also nesting time, and the rookeries fringing the mangroves of the flooded (??) river systems would attract many varieties of birds – cormorants, egrets, pelicans, herons, ibis etc – all enjoying the abundance of small aquatic life and vegetation.

Now the ibis have returned, but in much depleted numbers. And the automatic watering is on the blink ! I often see just a single ibis seeking caterpillars or just something to eat as he patrols the grounds of the complex, instead of the dozen or more that were here previously.

Next time: Feeding the birds