Birds in Their Habitats by Ian Fraser

Author:Ian Fraser
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781486307463
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing

Other memories of mountains

Like fleeting glimpses of snow-slashed black peaks, which loom through gaps in the swirling clouds, then withdraw into the diaphanous curtain, here are some random mountain memories:

• High in the Kapteinskloof Mountains north of Cape Town is a private nature reserve called Mountain Mist. I spent a memorable night there some years ago – the views alone are immense, northeast to the rugged Cederberg Mountains and west across the coastal plains 1000 m below to the Atlantic Ocean and Saint Helena Bay (reputedly the largest bay in Africa). As the sun sank over the sea, the distant strip-cultivated plains were charcoal and pale green and the sea was palest misty blue merging into the sky. The foreground tumbled away from my verandah in heath-covered rockiness (‘fynbos’ in the local usage). Proteas crowded in, and glowingly glorious Orange-breasted Sunbirds and taxonomically enigmatic Cape Sugarbirds worked the big flowers. The sugarbirds comprise just two species in a Family of utterly uncertain relationships: this one has a curved bill, brown back and white undersides streaked all over, and a hugely long tail. The sun swelled and turned that peculiarly African shade of vermilion just before disappearing. In the dusk, two sugarbirds sat up in silhouette. In the morning, the world on the mountain was in brilliant sunshine but below was a dense white blanket. I inched down the narrow rough road, sometimes through passages cut through the rocks, with mist stifling all views. Sometimes I saw a ghostly sugarbird by the road, once a silhouetted Ground Woodpecker, all in silence.

• Another misty day, near the summit of Mount Kosciuszko in Kosciuszko National Park, the highest point of Australia: this is an ancient land that has been eroding away for a very long time and ‘Kosci’ is just 2300 m above sea level. The wind ripped the cloud into shreds but it reformed immediately. It was midsummer, but uncomfortably cold. A small flock of Little Ravens inspected the tumbled granite boulders, intently peering into crevices. They were looking for Bogong Moths: a medium-sized grey moth that emerges in spring on the black soil plains hundreds of kilometres to the north, where the larvae (known as ‘cut worms’) have spent the winter feeding on plant roots. As their ‘foremoths’ have done for millennia, the adult moths flew south at night, not feeding as they travelled, and spent the days somewhere dark and quiet, be it cave or broom cupboard. They find the same crevices that thousands of previous generations have used and spend summer in partial aestivation in the cool dark crevices. Little Ravens gorge on their fatty bodies, as do antechinuses (small marsupial carnivores). At night, inexplicably, some of the moths fly, though they still don’t feed, and bats and Southern Boobook Owls are waiting. In autumn, the survivors fly north again, lay eggs – and die. No moth makes the trip twice: the map is hard-wired into their tiny brains. And each year the Little Ravens will be waiting for them.

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