Margaret and Owen O'Brien talk to Robyn Ballinger about changes in the bird life at Pine Grove in northern Victoria.

Like other Victorian rural areas, the rural population of the Patho Plains is decreasing. When landowners move out of the district, they take a wealth of historical knowledge and experience with them.

The Patho Plains Oral History Project was developed to capture the historical knowledge of farmers and landowners to better understand the changing landscape. These interviews and photographs form part of that project.

Further Information

Patho Plains Oral History interview excerpt 14: Margaret and Owen O'Brien

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

ROBYN BALLINGER: We've talked about vegetation. What about birds and animals? What sort of birds do you see around here?

MARGARET OBRIEN: Well, we get an occasional brolga.

ROBYN: You get the occasional brolga?

MARGARET: I think they used to come a bit more often.

OWEN OBRIEN: Yeah, years ago, you used to have a lot of swans nesting down the lake. That's gone to sewerage farms and things now. Actually, the neighbour's got quite a few birds this year and he reckons it's because he's got more water and it's thinned out the reeds.

ROBYN: OK.

OWEN: So it's a bit more open.

ROBYN: You've got more reeds?

OWEN: Not quite so many birds. It may have been before... Well, I remember 80, 80 swans there, marching up the... Here we were raising me crops...(Laughs)

ROBYN: And what era was that, Owen? What year approximately do you reckon that was?

MARGARET: That was before I come along so it would be late 1960s, I reckon.

ROBYN: Yeah. Yep. Swans, brolgas... Yeah.

MARGARET: Just at the moment down at... You know, even though we haven't got the swans or whatever, we've got white-winged wrens.

ROBYN: White-winged wrens!

MARGARET: White-winged wrens, yes. I suppose they may have been here long ago in the past, but this is the first time they've been here.

ROBYN: Fantastic. Yeah.

OWEN: Down at the glassons, they call it, across the nature plains area, yeah.

MARGARET: And chats and thornbills...

ROBYN: So thornbills and...

OWEN: We had whistling kite nesting down in the trees down there near the gravel pit.

ROBYN: Just recently?

OWEN; Yeah, last five years.

MARGARET: Whistling kite. That's right. We've also got those Pacific herons. Somebody told us that they usually come in...

ROBYN: Pairs?

MARGARET: No, little congregations of them, I think. But we thought there was only the one, but it turned out there were three or four nests down near the gravel pit, down there. I think they might be there again, Robyn. I'm not sure.

ROBYN: Really?

MARGARET:Yeah. They're the ones with the long white necks.

ROBYN: And something you said - chats, did you say?

MARGARET: Chats, yes.

ROBYN: What are they?

MARGARET: They're a little colourful bird.

OWEN: We get the diamond tails.

ROBYN: Oh, diamond tails? Yeah.

OWEN: ..We used to call them, I suppose. We've had big mobs of the little native hen, the little black native hen, sometimes.

ROBYN: Yeah.

OWEN: We've got some of them across the road...

ROBYN: There's some across the road now?

OWEN: There might even be some in the swamp, it's so much grass up.

ROBYN: You can't see.

OWEN: Heard a lot of ducks making noise in there, but I couldn't see what they were doing.

MARGARET: Willie wagtails and the usual little wren.

ROBYN: Mmm.

MARGARET: Silk... is that what they're called?

OWEN: Oh, yeah. A few of the honeyeater-type things...

ROBYN: The what, sorry?

MARGARET: Honeyeaters. Yes.

OWEN: We've even got a couple of those darned Indian mynas.

MARGARET: They've only just come this year, I think.