While recently observing a nesting Australasian grebe (Tachybaptus novaehollandiae) on a dam at Callum Brae Nature Reserve*, keen birder Julian Robinson noticed something a tad unusual.
“As I was photographing the waterbird close to its nest, quite suddenly the bumps shown in the photo appeared,” Robinson says. “They didn't appear like bubbles, seemed solid, all the same size and didn't burst or disintegrate like bubbles.”
So perplexed was Robinson that soon after returning from the dam he was moved to suggest to the Canberra Birds internet chatline that “the bumps appeared to be parts of one thing, like the Loch Ness Monster”.
The chatline was quickly abuzz (or should that be chirping?) with theories as to the origins of the baffling bumps, including tortoises, a partly-submerged platypus, a snake and even the heads of young grebes. Robinson was quick to dismiss the possibility that they were tortoises as “none have any little nostrils or eyes to look like tortoises, and the shapes are too symmetrical” and after zooming in on his photo, he couldn't see “any shape that might support snakes or platypus”.
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