Emi Arnold

Sorry, not a bellbird, a shrike tit sitting in the tree above me with a super similar call.

I'd never seen or heard one before.

I wasn't to know.

And so all my records of diamond firetails were probably this one bird following me around.

A lot of it's just through reinforcement of particularly, I'll use an example of like brown tree creeper.

It's just such a short, sharp little, like a little peep.

it could be anything but it's just because I've seen them so many times just sitting on logs or on a tree trunk or you know in a campground and they'll be peeping away and so it's just kind of like that sight and sound linkage it's just like I've just formed that connection in my head and that's how I've done it it's just yeah lots of repetition yeah the first time I saw and heard glossy black cockatoos I'd done a little bit of reading up on them because I was going to be in the right habitat but I knew it was going to be a long shot

It's like, oh, I just listened to the call, you know, the week before just in case, but, you know, it's a long shot.

And then I heard them out in the bush that day and I was with someone from the area and he's like, oh, what's that?

I'm like, that's a glossy black cockatoo, of course.

I'm like, why am I saying this with any authority?

I've never seen or heard them before, but I just knew.

That was a bit of a white whale for a couple of years when I was just bird watching just to kind of get skills up really quickly.

I was going out to Ainsbury and a lot of other grey box forests around Melbourne just to try and catch sights of when I'd see them on eBird.

Like, oh, someone saw them this morning.

I'll go out there this afternoon.

I'll try and catch them in the afternoon.

And they eluded me for so long.

I was getting swooped by magpies walking around the trails there.

Like, oh, I'm not sure if I'll ever get to see them.