I have had some weird experiences on our Huon Valley farm over the years.
Today, while bent over to tend the vegie patch, a magpie crash-landed on my back.
I’ve been dive-bombed by magpies before but this felt a bit different.
Rather than fly off the magpie hopped onto a short fence just 2m away and stood there looking at me.
I politely told it off for being so cheeky as to attack me, and it just kept staring back.
So – as you do – I started warbling at it like I was a magpie.
It took a keen interest in this performance, and then – knock me over with a feather – it jumped down at my feet and started pecking around for insects.
I kneeled down and pushed a couple of bits of debris aside so it could grab worms, which it did, in some cases from my hand.
This went on for a couple of minutes, and I had to walk a few steps to find more debris and worms.
Then our bloody cat came along and started lining up the magpie as a prey item.
I hate cats, but that’s another story.
I shooed the cat away, but the magpie got a fright and jumped back on the fence.
Then a curious thing happened.
Two other magpies came flying in fast, very vocal too, and they started chasing my new mate.
They were extremely aggressive, and as the three flew off I felt that the tame magpie was going to be killed.
Perhaps it was someone’s handraised bird, and the other magpies knew it was odd?
Dunno, but I might have had a new mate around the farm if it wasn’t for the bloody cat.
Dunno what its story was, but I was sad to see the bird go.
Global sea temperatures are going up and Antarctic ice is cover going down … fast!
It is likely we will have hot summers with severe bushfires in the Huon Valley this year and next.
The predicted El Nino is likely to be a strong one, with record temperatures already being recorded across the globe.
Canada is having an all-time record wildfire season, Hawaii has burned like never before, and bushfires are making news across Europe.
What can the Huon Valley do to prepare?
Apart from the obvious, like removing potential fuel from around our homes, cleaning gutters and having a fire pump handy, Huonites need easy access to river water.
While we have several potable water suppliers in the valley, landowners are likely to need river access this summer or next to fill fire and stockwater tanks.
Dams are likely to dry out and buying potable water for stock is not viable in an extended drought.
(Our partially spring fed dam is already half empty and it is winter.)
It shouldn’t be too hard to cut landings into the river bank, much like an unsealed boat ramp, where people can back trailers down to fill tanks.
Not everyone is friends with a landholder who has river frontage.
Potable water suppliers may resist the idea but this is an urgent matter, potentially saving property and livestock.
The access points could be limited to being used only during summer, or drought. The landings could also double as canoe launching spots.
If access points can’t be created, alternatively, acreage holders could be given summer access to fire hydrants via a permit scheme?
The Huon River is a perennial river, we have no shortage of water, just a shortage of access.
Something for the Huon Valley Council to consider?
A spring fed dam in Judbury during a dry spell in winter 2020.
A couple of the hives failed during a dry summer, and it was a year or so before I retrieved the empty hives.
I put the hives in the back of my 4WD wagon, where they sat for two or three days before I unloaded them into the shed.
A week later my family decided it was a nice day for a drive to the beach.
There were two things my young daughters hated at the time.
One was my old 4WD, and the other was spiders.
My youngest daughter wanted to take our Corolla, but I insisted on taking the old 4WD so we could carry extra picnic and snorkelling gear.
On the way to beachside bliss, not far from our house, a huge huntsman spider climbed up the windscreen in front of my wife.
My cranky daughter, already moaning about the car, became furious.
“I hate this car! I want to go home!”
We got rid of the spider and I assured everyone that everything would be OK.
Off we went.
Another 2km later and another huge spider crawled up the window on the passenger side.
My youngest daughter was now approaching apoplexy.
I said: “I’ll get rid of it, don’t worry! There will be no more!”
Turns out, about 10 huge huntsman spiders crawled out into the open that day, up the back of seats, up the sides of doors, and even on the ceiling, one by one, a few kilometres apart, as we drove.
And that’s just the spiders we saw.
Might have been more under the seats.
One of our several emergency stops on the rural road was next to a lone residence.
At this stage, both my daughters were almost foaming at the mouth.
My wife had also become animated.
I too was contemplating the likely prospect of a huge huntsman spider running up my leg while I was driving.
There were screams within the car, and I saw a curtain move to one side at the nearby home as I barked orders.
We made it to a service station in Huonville where I bought a tin of insect spray.
I fumigated the car.
“There will be no more spiders,” I said again, but all trust and joy was lost.
We had to return home.
To the people in that residence, I apologise for disturbing your peace that day.
The pursuit of the thylacine has taken me to strange places, both physically and mentally.
Subtle eye rolls and outright guffaws are expected responses to one’s belief that the thylacine still exists, but thankfully the older I get the less I care.
Regardless, knowing the animals are still here makes one resilient to the most passionate assertions of the extinction mantra.
More recently, a strange place I have visited is a thing called the NFT market, where digital tokens are made and sold, or more correctly, minted and traded.
In the USA, they must give endangered condors chelation treatments to get the lead out of their bodies.
Bears and other animals are also affected.
The lead found in carnivores comes from bullet fragments left in the remains of animals shot by hunters.
Tests have shown that captive Tassie devils, fed the remains of shot animals, have more lead in them than wild devils.
Poison, usually 1080, has been used to control wallabies in Tasmania.
Devils have some resistance to 1080 poison, but quolls are less able to survive it.
Of course, with the thylacine, no one knows if they are resistant.
Organophosphates are used illegally to kill protected animals such as eagles and devils, because they sometimes kill lambs.
No animals have resistance to organophosphate poisons.
Pindone is a popular rabbit poison that might also be a problem for carnivores that ingest affected rabbits.
Recreational shooters would happily clear rabbits from a farm, so there are alternatives.
Farmers and forestry do most of the large-scale rural pest control in Tasmania.
Forestry contractors kill wallabies when seedlings are planted.
The animals are either poisoned or shot.
Farmers control wallabies and possums because they destroy pasture and fruit crops.
I propose that all pest animal control should be done by shooting, trapping and fencing.
For the sake of all Tasmanian carnivores, and human consumers of game meat, pest control shooting should be done with non-toxic bullets.
Lead shot has already been banned for waterfowl hunting in many parts of the world.
Some countries have banned lead rifle projectiles.
While non-toxic bullets are usually not as good as lead bullets in terms of efficiency, they do the job well enough.
I use a .22 rimfire rifle with tin bullets and they work fine. The accuracy is not red hot but it is good enough.
Unfortunately there is no non-toxic .22 rimfire cartridge available in subsonic, an otherwise ideal pest control cartridge for quietly knocking off pest animals around a small farm.
With lead bullets and 1080 poison removed, there would be fewer toxic wallabies or possums left lying around the state, and devils, eagles and quolls would benefit.
Humans and their pet cats and dogs would benefit too, because lead is toxic to anyone or anything that eats lead from shot game meat.
With clean meat lying around, instead of poisonous muck, the thylacine might even make a comeback.
There were high hopes the La Nina would bring a load of rain, but the Weather Bureau’s three-month anomaly map for Nov/Dec/Jan 2020-21 tells the story.
The south-west’s drying trend appears to be continuing.
At least Tasmania didn’t burn this year (yet), as it did in 2019.
The Wandering Foxbat (an aerial video YouTube channel) toured the south-west after the Gell River fire, here’s their graphic footage showing the charred Tasmanian moonscape … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7XdzB32f28
