The Crested Shrike-tits of Flint State Forest

Beating your nemesis after a prolonged, difficult and entirely one-sided battle has to be one of the all-time great moments of birding.

For many months now, the happily unsuspecting and very lovely Crested Shrike-tit has been my nemesis bird. I've endured bitter cold and scorching heat and travelled great distances to find this bird. And it hasn't just been physical. It got personal, psychological. Why couldn't it just appear? Other people could find them - why couldn't I? I'm an ethical birder and a nice enough person. Didn't I deserve a sighting? What did this bird have against me?

The Western Shrike-tit sub-species is a medium-sized, quiet bird with a striking appearance. It is only found in the south-west of WA and is listed as near-threatened due to loss of habitat. It's not a gregarious bird and sightings are relatively rare.  One birder said he had seen the Shrike-tit just twice in his thirty years of birding. 

So my hopes were centred around other birds on my early morning trip to Flint yesterday.

I walked through the forest and the usual offenders were there: the ubiquitous Yellow-plumed Honeyeaters, the Rufous Tree-creepers and even a couple of Restless Flycatchers. There was also a group of Western Rosellas. The quail I had failed to get a shot of last time obliged me for long enough to get a quick snap and was later identified as a Painted Button-quail.

Eyes cast upwards, I almost tripped over a stripy creature as it slithered into its underground den. 

When I sighted a pair of unusual looking birds from a distance, I thought they may have been babblers because of their size and the white stripe on their faces. It didn't take me long to work out that they were in fact Crested Shrike-tits. You can imagine my joy at finally stumbling upon these beauties. 

There were an adult and a juvenile who stayed in fairly close proximity to each other as they quietly foraged in the leaves of eucalypts - for insects or perhaps lerp. The adult would occasionally feed the youngster but the little one was fairly independent. They remained in a small area hopping from tree to tree then stopped in a dead tree for a moment of preening. 

The birds weren't bothered by me and even came into the low tree I was standing beneath to continue in their search for food. At one point, they were just a metre away from me. In spite of this, I didn't get a clear, unobstructed photo of them partly because they weren't still for long enough and partly because they existed in the leaves.

I spent about half an hour watching them and then, as it was getting warm, moved on before the heat became oppressive. It was about 8.30am by now and I visited 'Babbler Town' which is a bit further up Collins Road but the five or six resident babblers were up in the very tall trees. They'd already finished their morning scramble around the forest floor and were not inclined to venture back down. I did catch a very young Yellow-plumed Honeyeater being fed by at least two adults which made for some nice photos.

To say the morning was a success would be an incredible understatement. It was an affirmation of the beauty, fragility and diversity of nature. It wasn't personal anymore; it was universal. It was, in the truest sense of the word, wonderful.