December 26th, 2022Your say…
Dear Kyle, (Kyle’s Rant, December 5, 2022) Yes, the geese are gone, and I note your bereavement, though it is one borne of a passé colonial attitude, that the Australian fauna is actually inferior to that of the Old World.
Your remarks might even have been made by the quaint and ignorant Victorian Acclimatisation Society of the mid-19th century. One of those mutton-chopped gents even proposed that monkeys be let loose in the bush so that they might entertain a weary traveller with their treetop antics (much in the way you are entertained by the Malmsbury gaggle).
Of course, in this age of runaway extinction, we can’t let the whim of an individual decide what species to have and not to have. Why, some people may object to the slashing of gorse at the lake because they delight in the yellow blooms; others the removal of rabbits, because they remind one of a Beatrix Potter tale.
I don’t mock your great love for and enjoyment of the domestic goose, but I wonder what you think of native waterfowl; the coots, moorhens and swamphens that forage unmolested along the (shit-free) lake shore? And of the reed warblers that can now be heard among the cumbungi?
There are cormorants (three species) too, diving or hanging out their wings. I saw a darter last month. Are these animals not loud enough or showy enough to be worthy of your attention and appreciation?
You don’t mention these animals, but they and many others are there and all the more noticeably so, now that the barnyard flock has been packed off to a comfy retirement on the Peninsula.
I correct myself, you do mention one native bird. I too have seen a few of these on the lake since the geese went south, but I do not recall anyone claiming ‘the skies would soon be thick with native black swans’.
I suspect you made this up, a sneer at those (such as the biodiversity officer and the elected councillors) who believe that our native Daylesford fauna is part of a heritage worthy of protection and appreciation. And for those for whom the lake fauna is lacking, there’s always Malmsbury. From Greg Pyers, Daylesford
