There’s nothing like a flood to bring out the crowd so far as the frogs are concerned, and it’s been a racket out in the forest for the past week.
Peron’s tree frog is the one keeping me awake: it’s a rising, rattling call and not unpleasant — but it can go for hours. Then there’s the pobblebonk and the spotted marsh frog and the eastern common froglet — all going hell-for-leather, so it’s quite the commotion.
The Boss takes an interest in the frogs and records them so he can send the odd one off to FrogID if it sounds unusual, but of more interest to me personally are the ducks.
We don’t know where the teal suddenly appear from when there’s a rising river, but these small, swift-flying ducks with their pale throats and distinctive white patches in their upper and under wings show up within a few days of a rising river, flitting from spot to spot and filling the air with their tell-tale cackling.
According to Slater’s Field Guide, the female teal utters a long, drawn-out cackle of exactly 15 syllables. The Boss hasn’t actually counted them, but he reckons it’s about right, and he likes the sound all the same.
The rising water over fresh ground attracts their interest as the worms, grubs, beetles and other insects are flushed out. I watch them paddling along the river’s edge, nosing in with their bills and ducking underwater to snare a morsel.
You can see why they thrive in wet, flooding years and find the going harder when it’s dry.
Sometimes, the teal will upend to reach a worm or bug and, like all the ducks, they will head out towards mid-stream when I head down for a swim, looking calm and almost stationary — but to hang there against the current, they must be paddling like crazy underneath.
This is the second minor flood we’ve had since the big one a year ago, but there’s not much comparison. The Boss said there was about 25,000 megalitres a day flowing past at the moment, which cuts off a few tracks and fills the lower-lying billabongs.
On October 16 a year ago, there was 150,000Ml a day flowing past Murchison, so it’s nothing like the roaring, rushing torrent we had back then.
That’s no comfort to the fish farmers below Eildon, though — the storage is sitting a smidge over 100.5 per cent full this week; Goulburn-Murray Water is dribbling out 17,000Ml each day.
You’d have to say it is delicately poised, wouldn’t you? With the soil wet again, another dump like last Tuesday’s would test everyone’s mettle. Woof!
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