BACK TO NATURE - Signs that Tell a Story

by Jamie Walker

It was the rocks’ size and weight that impressed the most. I remembered creating the rockery and putting them in place. I had needed to apply a two-handed lift with a careful posture which cosseted my back. Yet here they were: tipped over and shifted to one side.

From beneath the rocks, soil had been scattered, and ants’ nests were in a state of panic.

My hands’ touch to replace each one, caused a frantic, defensive reaction and the fierce emergence of thousands of insects. This was the mark of an Echidna, which had excavated each nest and then worked with its long, sticky tongue, to collect and consume insects, eggs, grubs and pupae.

Later, I found our spiky visitor, but it escaped my close scrutiny by worming its way under our boundary fence – flattening its body to do so. This is not the animal’s only extraordinary physical skill. I once tried to pick up an Echidna to shift it away from the threat of traffic. I couldn’t move it, because it anchored itself firmly into the ground using its powerful digging claws – the same claws and feet that had now moved rocks twice its size and three times its weight.

Echidnas are not the only creatures to possess exceptionally strong feet. The enormous, yellow talons of Powerful Owls tell a stark tale of brutal strength and capability. The bird’s name is apt. It is our biggest owl; it has a wingspan of 1.4 metres and can weigh more than 2 kilograms. Its prey can be quite substantial – consisting of possums, gliders, flying foxes and larger birds like cockatoos, crows and magpies.

Research and monitoring have shown that Powerful Owls may be commoner in places, than we previously thought – even inner-city parks may hold territories for mated pairs.

Yet they are hard to find. Sitting quietly by day, in the shade of thickly leaved branches, they are much more aware of us than we are of them.

To know if they are present, we need to read the signs they leave. (Just like the Echidna).

You might be lucky enough to hear their deep, double-note call, “Hoo-hoo!” I have positively heard it only a few times – being coincidentally in the right place at the right moment. A far more likely clue is the discovery of feeding signs.

All owls regurgitate indigestible parts of their food, in the form of pellets; which litter the ground below roost sites. I have found the little pellets of Boobooks, but not those of Powerful Owls, which are said to be at least the size of your thumb.

However, on more than one occasion, along the paths that comprise the Maleny Trail by the Obi Obi Creek, I have found scattered patches of torn out fur and plucked feathers: and something else – small, grisly piles of entrails which these apex predators have removed from dead prey. These are indications of a tough world, savage necessity and hard lives.

We miss or overlook a great deal: distracted by pressures of our modern world or by our regular ritual of retreat and sleep at each day’s end. But if we look for the signs, we may learn and understand what we haven’t yet seen; and this may lead us to know so much more.