Lucky Echidna
December 2007
Along with the platypus, the must-see Australian mammal for me was the Short-beaked Echidna. A bizarre, spiny creature that lays eggs and eats ants (hence its alternate common name of spiny anteater), and reminds me of the hedgehog of my European homeland—how could such a creature fail to capture my heart? Flinders Chase National Park is one of Australia’s most predictable places to see echidnas in the wild, yet it took me a while to find one to photograph.
Luckily I followed the advice I got years ago from a veteran nature photographer—the four BEs: BE there, BE aware, BE prepared, and BE lucky. Being there is half the battle, so I spent lots of time poking around in likely echidna habitat (even when I didn’t feel like it), always listening for the rustling and scratching of leaves, a hint that one might be foraging nearby. Risking an aching neck, everywhere I went I had my camera-mounted 300mm IS lens slung over my shoulder. Finally we did find one echidna, and after that our luck continued such that we began seeing them everywhere, even along the side of the road where we noticed one as we were driving past. My equipment was easily retrieved from the back of the car. Hand-held and image-stabilized, it allowed me to get down to the echidna’s eye level within seconds, ready to shoot.
Being there in the woods paid off in other ways. Once I was standing quietly looking around—there, aware, and prepared—when out of the corner of my eye I saw something zip into a little hole up in a tree trunk. On closer look, it turned out to be a Striated Pardelote building its nest, something I probably never would have noticed had I simply been walking along. These small colorful denizens of eucalyptus forests are in the group sometimes called “diamond birds.” I opted to include the entire tree-knot that contained the nest hole, because of its interesting pear shape, even though that renders the bird small in the frame.
The more you try the luckier you get.