Season of Creation 4 – 2 Bird Corridor by Julie Perrin
The Bird Corridor
In the early 2000’s my cousin and her husband moved from central to Northeast Victoria after they had decided that their family farm would become unviable in the long term. They were to make a new beginning on an open paddock. From scratch.
Twenty years later, they had built a straw bale house at the foot of the Warby Ranges. They planted a large vegetable garden which provided for most of their needs. Lambs and goats provided meat. They lived simply. With the exception of building materials, shopping was never a big priority.
From the deck, looking out across the Ovens Valley towards Mount Buffalo, they would delight in the bird life around them and the swathes of trees they had planted across formerly cleared farmland.
On the deck are several nesting boxes to encourage native birds, particularly red rump parrots and crimson rosellas. The native garden attracts honey eaters, blue wrens and white-browed babblers. Antechinus visit the deck regularly and squirrel gliders occasionally. All sorts of birds inhabited the growing trees around the house and pass through the garden – shrike thrushes, white wing choughs king parrots, magpies, crimson rosellas and mudlarks. A satin bowerbird built a bower among the shrubs.
My cousin has neighbours who value the beauty of the environment, the old growth trees and the bird life. But one neighbour moved in who was supremely knowledgeable about the life of birds and associated care of the land. This neighbour was a renowned photographer and authority on birdlife and had done extensive ecological studies in other parts of Victoria and beyond. They became friends and shared a practice of planting a variety of native vegetation.
Between their properties was an adjoining farm block with old growth natural woodland which forms part of a natural bird corridor between the Ovens River and the Warby Ranges National Park that the neighbour’s land backed onto. In his gentle way, their neighbour enthused them with his dream to enhance the bird corridor.
The opportunity to purchase the block arose, so using some of their superannuation, they bought the adjoining block of land that enabled their property to further build onto the corridor their bird loving neighbour was establishing.
It was like having a new member of the family. Every time I called, my cousin would give me an update on their visits to their adjoining block, the new plantings they’d done, the visitors they had taken there, the log seats they’d set up to take in the view of the sunset and to listen to the birdlife around them. Their delight was palpable. By this simple and decisive action, they were part of a future that could sustain the life of the birds and animals they so loved.
Julie Perrin, September 2025.