White-winged Fairywrens are very pretty little birds, not rare, but the ones I know are a beautiful blue and white. All my life I have admired the illustrations in field guides of black White-winged Fairywrens and (naturally) I've always wanted to see one. I believed it was only possible to see the black and white subspecies on Dirk Hartog Island off Western Australia and that the island was inaccessible to the public. Last year, when I was birding in the Pilbara, I saw an advertisement for tourists to visit Dirk Hartog Island. I immediately made plans to go there. Dirk Hartog Island is located in Shark Bay, about half way up the WA coast. We had three days on the island, 'we' being me and my guide, Louis Masarei. I flew to Perth, where Louis met me and we drove to Geraldton, ticking the northern race of Western Corella on the way. The next day we drove to Hamelin Pool, where we saw a different race of Rufous Fieldwren, new to me. Most memorably, a darling little Redthroat sat at eye level and serenaded me beautifully. However, we made the mistake of staying at the caravan park, where my room was infested with dozens of tiny cockroaches. I was pleased to leave very early the next morning, where we saw a Spotted Nightjar on the road in the dark. We took our car on the barge to the island at 8.30, then had plenty of time to find fairywrens before we could book into our accommodation at 2. I'm not sure of the size of the island, but I was told it was 94 kilometres long. Here's what it looked like:
Most of the island was previously a sheep station, and our accommodation was the shearers' quarters. The sheep have long gone (except one pet dorper) and most of the island now is National Park. Various captive bred native animals have been released there and I confess I got almost as much joy from these little critters as I did from the birds I went there to see. And yes, Louis found me black and white White-winged Fairywrens pretty quickly. He has extremely accute hearing, which helps with all these tiny birds. The most remarkable thing about the fairywrens was that the male has a blue tail. This is not illustrated in most of the field guides (although it is shown accurately in HANZAB). Louis took this photo.
Then Louis turned his attention to the Rufous Fieldwren. The one on Dirk Hartog is
Calamanthus campestris hartogi. It didn't take Louis long to provide me with excellent sightings of this bird too. Again, this is Louis' photo.
Now for the last of our trio, the local race of the Southern Emuwren. There were lots of Little Crows to distract us, including one with aberrant brown feathers.
Very sadly, we saw a dead one, his feet entangled in fishing line, attached to a tree, and, not a metre away, but quite inaccessible to the dangling bird, was its nest. It was too high for me to see if anything was in the nest, but the scenario does not bear thinking about. A bustard flew off, grunting, sounding to me like a White-faced Heron. I don't remember hearing them vocalise before. We visited the blowhole, then booked into our accommodation, but we had not seen or heard any emuwren. The next day I made the mistake of agreeing to go on a so-called 'Marine Safari.' I hoped to see some seabirds. In fairness, no one mentioned seabirds. The talk was all of whales and dugongs, and we certainly saw those. We also saw a large leopard shark and a very pretty sea snake. But I did not go to Dirk Hartog Island to see a pretty sea snake! Louis saw some Wilson's Storm Petrels. They were too quick for me, but, even if I had seen them, they would not have satisfied me that my day had been well spent. Apart from anything else, I did not like the loud popular music they played on the boat. 'Unpopular' would be a more appropriate description for me. Back on land, my mind returned to emuwrens. Again, they proved elusive. That evening, we were driven to the highest point of the island, Herald Heights, to admire the sunset. There were two 4 wheel drives, each with 4 passengers. I was not particularly enthusiastic, but I saw no reason not to go. It took about half an hour driving over sand dunes to get there. We were offered bubbly and stood around waiting for the sun to set. We were soon joined by several little critters and the sunset was quite forgotten. Perhaps the best (for me), or at least the most photogenic, was this Western Barred Bandicoot. I took this photo with my phone.
We also saw a Desert Mouse, a Heath Mouse and, something I'd always wanted to see, a Great Stick Nest Rat. Both Rufous and Banded Hare-Wallabies were seen along the road and at the homestead. The next day, our final day on the island, we really had to see the
hartogi race of Southern Emuwren. Although I had come primarily for the black White-winged Fairywren, and we had seen that well, naturally I wanted to see all the endemics. Two out of three is simply not good enough! It was very windy, which makes hunting small birds difficult. Of course Louis eventually succeeded, and we had quite adequate views of the emuwrens. Here's his photo to prove it:
We took the barge back to the mainland the following morning, pleased with our three out of three subspecies success. Before flying back to Perth out of Learmonth (leaving Louis to find his own way home) I admired several other new races and saw my first Black-flanked Rock Wallabies at Yardie Creek. I saw Canary White-eye (race '
balstoni'), Copperback Quailthrush (race '
clarum'), some beautiful Black-tailed Treecreepers (race '
wellsi') on the dry Gasgoyne River and, despite irritating Louis because I didn't want to get my feet wet in the mangroves, a very handsome White-breasted Whistler (race
carnovoni) at Wapet Creek. The trip was 100% successful. I saw the black and white White-winged Fairywren and I ended up with 11 new subspecies on my lifelist, and that's not bad, I'm sure you'll agree.
