The bird stands, feet in the water, beak pointed to the sky. It is still.
It eyes us off out of the corner of one eye.
It stretches its neck slightly, thinning itself to blend into the blades of rice that it stands within, and it almost succeeds, but we don’t move away.
The Barry White of the water bird world, the male bittern booms out with a bass-filled love song to lure females and also demarcate their territory to the competition.
The bird begins to lower itself, beak still pointed to the heavens, in a nonchalant manner, as if it had been intending to do so anyway.
It slips down 20, then 30 centimetres until finally the tip of its beak is obscured by the swaying rice reeds and its bum must be in the water.
The bird watchers let out a cheer. It’s a rare thing to see this bird.
This is the Bunyip bird, named so because of its deep booming call, which floats out of swamps at dawn and dusk.
Officially, it’s known as the Australasian Bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus) and it’s listed as globally endangered.
That means there are only about 2,500 individual birds left, and they are spread out across Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. They are enigmatic and mysterious. For example, seven hundred and fifty Australasian Bitterns, almost a third of the world population, have decided to breed amongst the rice crops of the NSW Riverina.
Australia produces an immense amount of rice. The Ricegrowers’ Association of Australia says that the country has the capacity to produce about a million tonnes of rice a year, most of which is exported.
Most of the farms are nestled within the Murrumbidgee and Murray Valleys, collectively stretching over hundreds of thousands of hectares.
From above, the grids of different crops (wheat, cotton, rice and others) resemble a patchwork quilt. This is how the Bittern views the landscape as it flies in from its mysterious overwintering. They search for intermittent wetlands in which to breed, and even though barely a glint of water can be seen in the rice bays, Bitterns can search it out.
They’ve been doing it for yonks.
Ian Payne is has been farming in the Coleambally region since he was a young man and currently runs six holdings.
‘I reckon they’ve been here a long time. I mean, ‘cos I drive the harvester, that’s one of my jobs and I’ve driven it since the early ‘90s probably, so I reckon I can recall seeing them off the header then even,’ says Payne, who was moderately surprised when the ecologists from the Bitterns in Rice project turned up.
‘I didn’t know what the fuss was about, ‘cos they’ve just been around.’
Yet bitterns are an odd and mysterious bird.
There are several weird things about them—such as the freezing behaviour I described above. Bitterns have also been recorded baiting fish with grass stalks and dunking frogs to drown them before eating.
They are thought to nest in pairs, though recent observations have seen small harems emerging, with one male providing DNA and protection to a small group of nesting females.
The Barry White of the water bird world, the male bittern booms out with a bass-filled love song to lure females and also demarcate their territory.
It’s thought that it’s only the males who call out like that—they call it booming. It’s sort of like the honk of the swan amplified by a couple of thousand.
Bitterns have an extremely narrow habitat preference: they’re picky about the depth of the water, the height of the reeds and the other types of cover that are present in the vicinity. Of course, they also need food to feast on and feed to their fledging chicks.
So really, given their peculiar song and ecological vulnerability it’s a delight that they’re sneaking around doing their funny business in the rice bays of the Riverina.
And it is extremely positive news that they do so when the rice farmers are following best practice.
That is, the farmers are following the guide book in trying to achieve high yields, and not necessarily making any farm management concessions for wildlife. Yet the Bitterns are still breeding in their rice, though they do seem to have some funny preferences.
For example, they like aerially sown rice—rice that is sown from a plane.
‘They’re more or less absent from half the rice, and that rice has been sown at the beginning of the season by direct drilling—it’s often called combine sowing or sod sown,’ says Matt Herring, a wildlife ecologist working on the Bitterns in Rice Project.* ‘Those types of sowing have delayed permanent water and they have dry phases.
‘They show a strong preference for rice crops that have been sown aerially. It seems to be because the water in those crops is there earlier, and so the prey base; the frogs, the yabbies and so on get going earlier,’ says Herring.
Ironically, sowing methods and rice breed selection have changed in recent years in order to save water for both economic and environmental reasons.
In fact, the efficient use of water is a point of pride for many farmers with the federal Department of Agriculture’s website stating that Australian grown rice uses 50% less water than the global average.
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It’s ironic that the drive for water efficiency launched in the aftermath of the millennium drought, which has benefited the environment in many ways, has lessened the amount of Bittern habitat.
It’s all about getting the balance right, says Herring, because the Bitterns’ rice preferences do not suit all the other wetland flora and fauna.
For example, the Australian Little Bittern and the Pobblebonk frog don't use rice bays, while the endangered Australian Painted Snipe does, but likes the water at different levels.
The Bitterns in Rice project continues to try and find out more about the elusive Bittern—including where it overwinters and also what sort of small, achievable farming interventions could improve rice farms for even more successful Bittern breeding
Right now, farmers are watching the Bittern chicks in the rice bays, trying to make sure that the chicks are fully fledged before they harvest their rice crops for the year.
‘It’s just awesome that they’re here, really awesome,’ says Payne.
‘I just think it’s great that we can grow a food, a high quality food, and support an endangered species, it’s just fantastic.’
*The Bitterns in Rice project is mainly funded by the Riverina Local Land Services, and is collaboration between the Rice Growers’ Association of Australia and Birdlife Australia.
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