The crow was the totem of one of the two main Noongar family groups.
For tens of thousands of years the Noongar people of southwest Australia lived alongside nature and passed down stories about the creatures that shared their world.
Birds figured prominently in traditional Noongar lore and the birds' characteristics that inspired these tales can still be seen and appreciated today.
These stories are important because they are not imports from Europe, America or Asia, but stories that originated right here in WA and have a rightful place in our heritage.
Black swans were once white as snow until they became too vain. Photo: Allen Newton
Here are a few I have discovered in my research.
Why the crow is black
In Noongar culture the crow is an important bird. Aboriginal people protect and control their environment by adopting plant and animal totems or "kobongs" which they regard as spiritual siblings and take responsibility for. These are inherited, awarded or simply chosen – and many Aboriginal people have up to a dozen – but amongst the Noongar a full half of the people are "crow people".
Wagtails attack bigger birds because of a Dreamtime grudge. Photo: Allen Newton
In the past, the Noongar had two great family groups – the crows (Wardong) and the white cockatoos (Mandich) – and for a crow to marry a crow or a cockatoo to marry a cockatoo was regarded as incest and severely punished. They saw the crow and cockatoo as "yin and yang", each complementing and balancing the other's characters. Nobody killed a crow or a white cockatoo.
Crows also had an important role in Noongar religion. Aboriginal people believed the birds helped to carry the spirits of the dead across the western sea to the afterlife at Kurannup, an idyllic place over the horizon beyond Rottnest and Garden islands. The rocky coast just south of Cottesloe Beach, called Mudurup, was sacred to the crow spirit and regarded as the place where the spirits left the land for their final journey to paradise.
On a lighter note, Noongar stories tell how the crow, like all birds, was once snow white until it accidentally lit a big bushfire. The crow, the seagull and the magpie raced for the shelter of a cave, with the gull getting there first, the magpie second and the crow, last. As a result the gull was unscathed and kept its pure colour, the magpie was burnt in patches, and the crow was burnt black all over.
The tawny frogmouth brought doom to those who heard its call. Photo: Lloyd Jones
Chitty Chitty's revenge
Known to the Noongar Aboriginal people as Chitty Chitty, because of its trademark chatter (the town of Chittering is named after the bird), the perky and active wagtail was said to be a gossip and was driven away from important tribal meetings.
Children were told not to chase wagtails because they'd be led into the bush and lost forever.
The wedge-tailed eagle was tricked by the splendid wren. Photo: Spencer Ford
The Noongar also tell a charming story about how, in the Dreaming, the wagtail was a great hunter who was one day robbed of his catch by Wardong the crow and Dwerda the dingo.
They say that the wagtail never forgot this crime, which is why it still angrily attacks crows and dogs much bigger than itself.
Coolbardie's day in the sun
The swamp hen dyed the black cockatoo's tail red. Photo: Peter Hancock
According the Noongar Dreaming, the sky was once so close to the ground that trees could not grow, people had to crawl and all the birds were forced to walk everywhere.
Working together they managed to prop up the sky with sticks, but it threatened to break the sticks and collapse to earth again – with potentially disastrous consequences.
The clever magpies, however, took a long stick in their beaks and pushed it up and up until the sky suddenly sprang upwards by itself, revealing the sun and creating the first sunrise.
The splendid wren stole its blue colour from the sky. Photo: Carolyn Turnbull
Coolbardie the magpie's boastful singing each morning is to remind everybody of its important role in creation.
Proud Maali's fall
The Noongar name for the black swan is Maali, and its colour also features in one of their Dreaming stories.
Carnaby's cockatoos 'evolved' into red-tailed black cockatoos. Photo: Kirri Hardy
Back then, they say, swans were white with grey beaks until they made the mistake of boasting about how beautiful they were in front of the wedge-tailed eagles, who punished their pride by pulling out their feathers and leaving them to die in the desert.
The crows found the plucked birds and took pity on them, covering the swans with their own black feathers so that the eagles could no longer recognise and attack them.
But the swan still has a few white feathers left at the end of its wings to remind it of what it once looked like, and its beak has been forever stained red from the bloody attack by the eagles.
The bringer of happiness
The joyous cry of the twenty-eight parrot and its cheeky tail wagging meant that it was always welcomed as a bringer of happiness by the Noongar people, who called the bird Darlmoorluk.
It was said that when Darlmoorluk was around, the camp was safe from evil spirits that roamed the bush.
Although twenty-eights were good to eat, the Noongar only hunted them in desperate times.
In the Dreaming, they say, Bulland the egret and Booladarlung the pelican were brothers and looked the same. One day they came upon a wide lake and each took up a position at either end to try fishing.
There were lots of fish at the pelican's end, but he was greedy and every time his brother the egret came to ask if he was catching any fish, he stuffed his catch into his mouth and shook his head, so the egret went away to subsist on the few small fish at his end.
After a while the pelican's antics saw him grow fat and his beak became stretched by the fish he hid in it, while the egret got thinner and thinner.
Then a hungry dingo came to the lake and attacked the pelican, who was so fat that he couldn't fly away and took a mauling from the dingo before his brother, the egret, came to his rescue by pecking the dingo around the head until it went away.
Ever since then, when you see a pelican take off you can see the ragged feathers which were torn by the dingo – a permanent reminder to share what you have with those less fortunate.
Saviour of the spirit children
To the Noongar seabirds play an important spiritual role that dates back to the end of the Ice Age.
Noongar tradition tells of the time before the sea levels rose, some 7500 years ago, when Rottnest and Garden islands were coastal hills.
The Noongar believed that the spirits of unborn children waited for their mothers in special places such as lakes and outcrops so, as the seas rose, these "spirit children" were cut off from any chance of finding a mother and being born into the real world.
Seabirds - particularly Djenark, the silver gull - maintain the spiritual link between Noongar country and the spirits trapped on the islands and beneath the sea, by flying between the coast and the islands.
When a gull is seen washing its beak in the river's fresh water it is said to be releasing the spirits it has gathered at sea back into the landscape so that they can at last find a mother and fulfil their destinies as human beings.
Harbinger of doom
When the Noongar people heard the deep eerie call of the dreaded Gubulgari after dark they knew that somebody among them was about to die.
The magical birds could turn into wood and talk to the spirits of the night, and the only way to counter their curse was to either kill and burn them or drive them away from the camp with smoke and incantations.
Today this harbinger of doom is known as the tawny frogmouth.
Red badge of courage
The Noongar say that in the Dreaming Chitty-Chitty the wagtail and Karlimoot the scarlet robin were fighting over hunting rights.
Chitty-Chitty was always getting into fights and fearlessly attacked Karlimoot, hitting the robin in the face and making his beak bleed, forever staining his chest red.
As a result, the wagtail still chases robins from its territory and monopolises the better hunting grounds.
Dreamtime sky blue
In the Dreaming, says Noongar tradition, when the birds were competing for their colours, the most difficult colour to obtain was blue, which was kept in the sky.
They realised that only the highest-flying bird would be able to snatch some of the sky's blue, so all the birds flew as high as they could until one by one they fell away, leaving only the eagle to soar above them all.
Warlitje the eagle was elated and was just about to claim his prize when Chiriger, the little grey wren, who had hidden among the feathers on the eagle's back, suddenly fluttered up that little bit higher and in a flash stole the blue, becoming the beautiful splendid wren.
The eagle was so angry at being condemned to be dull brown that he swore to attack and kill Chiriger if he ever again flew higher than the low scrub, which is why splendid wrens stay close to the ground to this very day.
The Noongar welcomed the appearance of Kannamit the welcome swallow as a sign that rain was coming.
Nol-yang's battle scars
According to Aboriginal folklore, Nol-yang the dusky moorhen's red and yellow beak and legs are the scars from a feud with Waitch the emu.
The story goes that the two birds' nests were very close to one another, and when the moorhen left her eggs for a few minutes to get something to eat, the emu shifted her nest so that she covered both her eggs and the moorhen's.
The moorhen wanted to shift the egg thief, but she was too small to attack the emu directly, so she built a big fire and threw the ashes on her, burning the emu's feathers brown.
The emu then sprang up in anger and hurled the moorhen into the flames, scorching her legs and beak so that to this day they are the angry red and yellow of fresh burns.
Tail of two cockies
Noongars believed that Karrak the red-tailed black cockatoo acquired its red tail markings on the tail from Ngo-lak the white tailed carnaby's cockatoo.
Tradition says that Ngo-lak was trying to defend a dingo which was attacking Chitty Chitty the willy wagtail.
Mulal the swamp hen was feeding at the time on a sedge, the roots of which ooze red sap, and he cut a reed and struck Ngo-lak across his back.
When Ngo-lak spread his tail to defend his back, Mulal threw lumps of red sap at his tail.
Ngo-lak became so hoarse from screaming that he could only vocalize "karrak" instead of the carnabys' call of "wola" and turned into Karrak, the red-tailed black cockatoo.
HELP SAVE OUR COCKATOOS
On Sunday morning, to find out more about the status of carnaby's cockatoos, Birdlife Australia will be holding its sixth community-based Great Cocky Count survey, to count night-time nesting sites of carnaby's cockatoos and red-tailed black cockatoos throughout WA.
The key aim of the survey is to identify as many nesting sites as possible on a single night, so if black cockatoos nest near your place, make sure you take part.
For more information and to report your findings see http://www.birdlife.org.au/projects/carnabys-black-cockatoo-recovery/great-cocky-count
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