John D. Pettigrew
 
 
 

A personal account of the life of the letter winged kite in the Channel Country of far Western Queensland. The author's wide experience with the eyes of diverse creatures is used to reveal how the letter wing can hunt at night, in contrast to its daytime hunting relatives. The narrative includes many other unusual denizens of the Diamantina Plains, such as the bilby, the plains wanderer, the inland taipan, and the Min Min light.

Summaries of Chapters:
 

Chapter 3. Moonrise Anticipated:
[Summary: This describes my first observations that a colony of letterwings was synchronised to the moon. The colony woke up about an hour before moonrise, which means that the colony rises an hour later every night, like the moon. I also describe the awesome stoop of the letterwing]

Chapter 4. Build-up: Kunjemara Creek.
[Summary: This is a description of a new colony of letterwings in the process of courtship and nest-building. While the chapter is short, flutter flight (used by the male in courtship) is lyrical and could provide the opportunity to display the pics of this beautiful bird]

Chapter 5. Blood at Dawn:
[Summary: Early morning field observations of tagged letterwings enabled a judgement of hunting success on the previous night. Blood on the talons or breast feathers, indicative of success, was observed following moonlit nights, but not at the New Moon].

Chapter 6. Hatching Synchrony:
[Summary: In a letterwing colony, neighbouring nests are at the same stage of development. This puzzling phenomenon was explained when a windstorm destroyed all nests. The rebuilt nests were all at the same phase of development and all chicks hatched at the Full Moon. This lunar synchrony provides the maximum chance of the vulnerable new hatchlings being provided for in their delicate early stages. Older chicks can tolerate the few days of privation that occur when hunting success plummets around the New Moon].

Chapter 7. Eyes of the Letterwing.
[Summary: This section provides a digestible account of avian vision from my special knowledge of the area. This could easily be expanded with abundant figures to widen the appeal of the book to bird lovers. The background is then used to show the importance of the observations on the letterwing kite's eyes, since they allow a unique comparison between two members of the same genus, one diurnal and one nocturnal.]

Chapter 8. Bifoveate retina:
[Summary: This account of avian foveas is necessary background to the finding that the letterwing retina has two foveas like diurnal birds of prey and unlike all other nocturnal birds of prey, which have only a single fovea like humans. It could be a "Box" here, or in the "Eyes Have Everything Chapter". Note that there is very little colour pictorial information published about the avian retina. This would be a good opportunity to present it with a clear functional relationship, instead of the pretty-pretty pictures of birds' eyes that are usually presented without functional context].

Chapter 9. Min Min Lights and the Fata Morgana:
[Min Mins are a topic of great fascination throughout Australia. I give an account of my own five sightings over 10 year's study,  as well as my recent successful attempt to stage this phenomenon in the Diamantina under the appropriate weather conditions. The mystical properties of these lights arise because of the interaction of 3 complex variables:- the psychology of the human observer on a dark night with an isolated light source in view; the properties of the light source itself, which may be natural like a bright planet, or man-made like a quartz-halogen headlight; and most importantly, the optical properties of the atmosphere during an inversion. In these conditions, light sources far over the horizon,  hundreds of kilometres away,  are brought into close view, yet retain their infinity optics while the observer expects them to behave as if they were close.]

Chapter10. The Inland Taipan.
[Summary: The coastal taipan is legendary for its aggressiveness and the potency and efficacy of its bite. The inland taipan is more quiet, but has an even more potent venom. Like the letterwing kite, the inland taipan is adapted specifically to hunt the long-haired rat. I also introduce the Gwardar, a more bad-tempered snake that is also common on the Diamantina plains and is commonly mistaken for the the shyer inland taipan.]

Chapter 11. Barn Owl City:
[Summary: A huge fund of detailed information is available about the sensory system of the barn owl. This information is placed in the Diamantina context where barn owls and letterwings take the same prey side by side, but with the barn owl clearly the superior nocturnal predator.]

Chapter 12. Tagging Letterwings:
[Summary: Catching letterwings by various methods in the field; tagging them with coloured leg bands, numbered wing tags or radio transmitters so individual can be followed from nest to creche tree to hunting area to beeding grounds to dispersal.]

A Selection from Chapter 1:

After dinner that night I went out to check a mist net that I had placed on the empty plains in an over-optimistic attempt to catch my first letterwing.  I wanted to look into a letterwingís eyes with an opthalmoscope. Nearly everyone in the party had vigorously mocked me for my wild presumption, and I had to admit that the net did look rather forlorn standing all by itself on the vast plain, with only one small group of stunted coolibahs nearby for company. I had chosen the spot because of these low trees, the only ones low enough that a bird using them might fly in or out at net height.
 Everyone stayed around the campfire instead of coming along,  in view of the infinitesimal odds of my catching anything. I promised to give a long beep on the horn if anything happened so they could come over with the other vehicle...a futile plan since we did not yet realise how those plains sop up sound so that even a noisy vehicle is inaudible at a 100 m distance.
 I was in a euphoric mood as I approached the net, despite an inner voice that told me how impossible were the odds of catching a kite when they had so much space to fly around in. Then I noticed a bright white bird's shape, letterwing size, picked out by the headlights  in the net!  I leaned on the horn for a long while, but saw no headlights emerging from the direction of camp. So I walked over to the net for a closer look. The bird struggled a little at my footfalls on the crackly drying vegetation and I had a puzzled feeling that, despite the bright white underparts, there were features that were not quite right for a letterwing: ............long bare legs, a large head, little flecks on the breast.
 At the realisation that I had caught a barn owl, I swore loudly. Barn owls are quite difficult to extricate from a mist net, even with assistance, and I was not happy at the thought of struggling with such a task for a species that I already knew very well, even breeding them for study at Pinjarra Hills. My "shit!" evoked an amazing result, however. Flushed by the sudden, heartfelt sound, a bird flew out of the little grove of stunted coolibahs, straight into the net! The presence of the large owl had tightened most of the net, so instead of being caught in one of the net's pockets, the newcomer bounced off the net and fell to the ground, almost at my feet. Without thinking, I grabbed it and put it inside my shirt, having brought no bird bag because of the remoteness of the chances of catching anything. The nasty task of avoiding the barn owl's razor sharp talons while I freed them went smoothly because I was in such a good mood with a letterwing nestled next to my belly.
 On the drive back to the camp, with a barn owl to show the troops and a letterwing whose mysterious eyes had never been examined in life before, I was as high as a kite myself. I was certainly not looking for any more marvels of the Diamantina to fall into my already full lap. But that's when it happens, doesn't it?.....just when you least expect it.
 The vision was completely puzzling at first, a common feeling at night when your view is limited by the headlights and when it is your first sighting of an unfamiliar creature. There actually seemed to be two creatures. One was rounded like a ball and vaguely reminded me of the armadillo that I had seen in the US with its nose close to the ground and its humped back. But this was much more animated tham an armadillo, galloping first in one direction and then suddenly changing erratically to another direction. As well as changing direction, it also changed speed, a happy fool that galloped and crawled and trotted on a whim. This was most comical behaviour. The comic air was heightened by the antics of the second animal which was closely pursuing the first but seemed exasperated that it never seemed able to catch up. However much the first one weaved, this much smaller white fuzzy animal bobbed and weaved around in its own different fashion and managed to sort of keep up.
 It took me less time to figure out the puzzle than it took me to tell you about it. I was watching my first bilby in the wild. The long tail is black except for the final large white flared "feather" at the tip. Since the black connection of the tail to the body is invisible at night, the tip assumes a life of its own behind the comical antics of the body in front. Perhaps there have been many bilbies in the past who were able to escape from predators in that first puzzling moment of an encounter like mine, with increased survival of those that produced the greatest puzzlement in the predator and therefore the most time for escape.
 Back at camp, I told my wonderful story of the night to faces that became increasingly disbelieving as I went on.  Just for fun I had left the evidence, in the form of the birds,  in the vehicle to "test the faith". At first no one suspected that I was not trying to pull their legs. But I was so good at providing exact details in response to unbelieving questions that  the skeptical tune finally changed and I was asked to produce some evidence.
 Delight at the barn owl provoked a photo session before we released it. The letter wing  caused great excitement and the realisation that I may have been telling the truth about the bilby after all. Of course, all were like myself and had never seen a bilby in the wild. Everyone begged me to take them back to the bilby site. I had noted the exact position on the plain, and when we returned,  there was the bilby hopping about happily as before! It soon ran down its burrow, so the cynics who had stayed ìhomeî by the campfire were not given such a long viewing, appropriately I thought. But the glimpse was enough to imprint the charm of this creature indelibly upon even the most cynical of the brains present.