From Lockdowns to Lifers

Lachie and I started volunteering at the BBO just over 2 weeks ago and we’ve already experienced so much here. We were given the position here on very short notice and luckily escaped Melbourne a few days before the lockdown began. Coming from a very cold, grey, rainy winter and landing here was probably the most extreme difference in landscape we could’ve gotten. Driving down the bumpy pindan track from the airport we were just staring out the window in awe. I’ve slowly become more and more aware of the myriad of bird calls which form the soundtrack to our day to day life in the BBO.

Daily life here as a volunteer includes brekky in the shade house watching the finches splash away in the bird baths, and the wallabies sneaking up for a drink too. Then we usually have a few rooms to make up in the accommodation block before check-in at 2 pm. Throughout the day we busy ourselves with various tasks like heading into the outdoor toilet blocks and fishing green frogs out of the cistern. They’re so bright and slimy it is the absolute weirdest sensation picking them up!

On one of our first nights here we wandered down to the bay for sunset. We had the huge stretch of beach to ourselves, and low tide meant we could walk far out onto the mudflats. The sun makes the red cliffs and sand glow in the light, and there was a big warm moon looking down on us.

Lachie’s brother Ben is the assistant warden here and he got right into teaching us all about the birds. Lachie is studying conservation + land management so he had a rough idea about the birding world but I am completely new at this. I have found this community to be so, so welcoming of people new to birding. On tours and in the shade house, there are always keen birders ready to help me ID whatever is drinking out of the bird bath that day, and chat to me about which birds I’ve seen so far, it’s been so lovely. These thoughts have been echoed by lots of campers I’ve been chatting to in the shade house, who have been staying here for the nature or as a stop on an Australian road trip, and now find themselves listening out to bird calls or grabbing a pair of binoculars to have a hunt for a Mistletoebird or an Australian Yellow White-eye they’ve spotted in a nearby tree - the birding life style is most definitely infectious.

My personal highlights in bird spotting have been rows of White-breasted Woodswallows, (I know they’re common but they’re so cute I get really excited), the Little Ringed Plover, a baby Bower-Bird, Yellow Chats, White-throated Gerygone, Brown Goshawk, Olive-backed Oriole, the Red-backed Fairy-wren, Brolgas, and the Broad-billed flycatcher.

White-breasted Woodswallows

Another surprisingly fun activity is the bird log held every night in the shade house at 6.30 pm. We all gather in there as one of the wardens reads through the common species found within 70 kms of the BBO and guests are invited to let us know if and where they’ve spotted a bird that day. The reason I say surprisingly fun is because I didn’t really expect that listening to a long list of bird names would be so entertaining - people are often making jokes about seeing common birds, everyone gets super excited when someone spots a rare bird, and at the end we all try and guess how many different species were seen that day.

We’ve been lucky enough to hop onto some BBO tours as well; my first tour was the bush and plains one run by Nyil and Olivia. The highlight for me was at the end of the tour out on the plains, being perched in the shrubs searching for the Yellow Chat to pop out. Given it’s golden hour, the colour on the birds absolutely pops and it’s so exciting watching the yellow flashing as they jump around the bushes in front of you.

One morning, we set our alarms for 5.30 am, and sifted through the box of mud boots in the dark trying to find the right size. We piled into the troopy and drove down the dirt track towards the mangroves as the sun rose in front of us. You enter the mangroves walking on sand and as you head deeper in, the ground just gets muddier and muddier until you’re trudging through very slippery mud, you’ve got to walk very slowly to make sure you don’t topple over. We kept stopping along the way getting distracted by various birds, but what we were really looking for was the Buff-banded Rail.

It feels like we’ve seen so many different landscapes while we’ve been here - the BBO really has it all. I’ve been trudging through mud at Crescent Lake, just kilometres from the red dirt, dry bushy pindan around the BBO grounds. But then, a couple hundred metres further you can look over the perfect blue water beach. And THEN, down Crab Creek road you can wander deep through the mangroves, and out over the white sand. And to top it all off, we’re pretty close to Broome so we can easily drive in for a coffee and lunch.

I feel so lucky to be here and am pinching myself living amongst such an incredible patch of nature on Yawuru country. Being here makes me so much more present in my day to day life focusing on birds, sounds and nature.