Unwanted wildlife

Unwanted Wildlife By Spencer ShawJust recently we have been blessed with the presence of three Brush Turkey chicks Alectura lathami in our rather small town yard in Maleny. “Blessed” I hear you say, “just you wait till they start raking all your well placed mulch and ripping out plants etc. then who’ll be blessed!” Well glutton for punishment that I am I’d still think we’re blessed, even if they did do those things. Fortunately we have never had problems with Brush Turkeys (well there was the incident of when I first grew rainforest seedlings, under some banana trees – but lets not talk about that, I’m nearly out of therapy over that one.) Brush Turkeys are one of those local species that have adapted to the changes that we have wrought on the landscape and yet are unfortunately referred to by many as somewhat of a nuisance. However, they are not the only successful wildlife that cops the bad press. Our cultural fear and loathing of snakes never fails to surprise me, and yet we have far more of a chance of dying when in the vicinity of a car than from a dreaded snake. Native Raspberries can thrive in paddocks and on forest edges but are surely a nuisance because of all those prickles? Rubus rosifolius is common on red basalt soils in SEQ and crucial wildlife habitat – because of the prickles! If that’s not good enough in my books the fruit is a tasty morsel to nibble on too. The list of successful and yet unpopular native species goes on and on and can include possums, bush rats, stinging trees, wattles – but for now lets get back to the turkeys.When I read of some of the many horror stories about Brush Turkeys devastating tree plants that some intrepid revegetators have been undertaking – I can’t help but think that the said writers are under the impression that the turkeys are purposefully targeting them or that these feathered little vandals should be more grateful for all the trees being planted.  After all it’s for their own good; all of that tree planting isn’t it! Well that’s where we might be wrong. The Brush Turkey is just doing what Brush Turkeys do (nature is very Zen!). They don’t think to themselves, “Oh how wonderful, those pale humans are creating a habitat that my descendants may enjoy and frolic in. That’s so good of them to see the error of their ways and plant one tree for every 10,000 they cut down when they came here. What I should do is demonstrate how grateful I am by scratching up the weeds growing around those trees they have planted and rake the mulch into neat and orderly piles around each plant” (I’m not sure wether turkeys are prone to this level of sarcasm, maybe its just me). The Brush turkey like the rest of nature is living very much in the here and now and seizes opportunity as it arises. Its us who have to think of how we can better change our reveg’ and gardening techniques to better suit our local environment and the turkeys of course.The Brush Turkey does not differentiate between weeds and natives, infact it is thought that lantana could contribute to their survival as chicks by giving them a prickly pile of stuff to hide in, although our much maligned native raspberries Rubus sp. also fill this niche. The main reason there are turkey chicks roaming around our yard and the local environs are the clusters of Camphor and Coral trees down in the gully behind us that our local dad Brush Turkeys build their nests under. Its not as if there are even any clusters of native vegetation to choose from. So it’s a simple matter of lowering ones standards and moving into an inferior weedy ecosystem or face local extinction. When we started revegetating in this area we actually had to argue to keep these trees to be able to get funding for native trees to plant. Not only would the cost of removal be prohibitive to us it would also have effectively rendered the wildlife homeless. Now six years on over 200 different native species are rocketing away with some trees at upto 10 –15 metres in height.  The privet have all been poisoned -Bam!, the Camphor laurels  thinned – Kersplat!, Morning glory annihilated – Kerpow! and the exotic grasses are gone -Wham! (I thought the batman style thumping noises might emphasise the beating of the weeds into submission). Best of all, in my mind however, the Brush Turkeys have been with us the whole way through this process, with two nest mounds every year. As have the Satin Bower Birds – Ptilonorhynchus violaceus birds and their bowers, Whip birds – Psophodes olivaceus, Koels – Eudynamys scolopacea, Brown Cuckoo Doves – Macropygia amboinensis, Southern Boobook Owl – Ninox novaeseelandiae and many more. Our philosophy has been that we must have net gains in native habitat before even thinking about removing weedy habitat (this scenario mainly applies if weeds are the only habitat).Some tips on Brush Turkey friendly gardening:• Don’t go overboard when it comes to tidying up your reveg’ patch, leave messy branches all over the place as they fall or are pruned. This will reduce their raking in that area.• Don’t feed them. This will inflate their numbers to greater than the local environment can handle.• Stake your plants, and try mulch mats instead of loose mulch, or even no mulch at all initially.
And remember give a Brush Turkey a hug today (metaphorically speaking), and revel in our good fortune at having these ancient megapodes as neighbours. Cheers to all the wildlife and plants that are taking advantage of us for a change!