Charles Kingsley was right. Imagine finding one of these in your garden. A Lewin Water Rail. We admit the garden has become a bit overgrown, but we also suspect the fox-proof fence around the farm is helping make it a haven for various unusual critters.
Della now tells me that there have only been 146 confirmed sightings of this bird in the last 150 years! So I/we have been astonishingly fortunate.
I was hand slashing some umbrella sedge which had becomes a little too enthusiastic under the avocado tree – just a small patch around 15’ on each edge – when this little guy scuttled out and went off to hide in the asparagus patch which is also quite overgrown at this time of year.
They are supposed to be a swamp bird but though I have hung around in such marshy places a lot, it is only the second one I have ever seen. A pair crossed the road in front of me going into Churchill a few year’s back. Nowhere near a marsh.
“No-one can say water-babies don’t exist because no-one has ever seen one not existing.” As Kinsley famously said. I remarked just the same thing when a (black) wallaroo turned up (dead) against our back fence just few thousand kilometers geographically removed from its ‘proper’ place, or when a white headed pigeon from Cape York decided it would visit with Della’s tamer cousins in her loft on the verandah.
It is a big island we inhabit which still has many such surprises – and I’m sure a handful or two of ‘unknown’ critters still to make their appearance in the annals of science. I know because I have seen a few such with my own eyes more than once.
Imagine our consternation to find it tangled in the bird netting around the strawberry bed this morning! They clearly like strawberries as blue-tongued lizards do!
We will have to replace that tomorrow with something more critter-friendly especially if we have one of Australia’s rarest birds living (and evidently breeding) in the garden because surely this one which I had to cut loose from the netting before I released it back into the shrubbery was just a juvenile – so small.
We will be doing more work on our fencing, dam building and tree planting etc to see if we can provide a safe haven for this little fellow and many other interesting critters besides.
I have been offered some pademelon wallabies. When I am sure they will be safe I think may take up the offer. I haven’t seen one in the wild since I was a boy.
She was quite unharmed by her encounter with the netting and me – quite willing to bite me anyway as you can see.
It was hanging upside down – those are just some of its droppings on its beak.
See Also:
The wildlife seems to get wilder
