Dancing on the Edge of the World
Everyone has a story about birds. They are all about us and are our contact point with nature. The birds I see are usually in an urban environment and so I concentrate on these in my writing. I don’t pretend to be an expert but birds of the city and suburb are also the ones that most people identify with, the species you do not need a compass and binoculars to seek out. A scarlet robin singing in a garden is just as exciting as a swift parrot in an ancient forest and is worth just as many words in my On the Wing writings, which appear weekly in the Mercury newspaper’s Weekend magazine.
By Don Knowler
Birds are always around us, always in view, always within hearing. Although most times they were merely on the periphery of sight and sound, the covid pandemic has put our feathered friends in the spotlight. With lockdowns and restricted travel, we have turned our attention to our immediate … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
I search for the beautiful flame robin in spring and invariably turn up its close relative, the scarlet robin. It makes me wonder if my illustrious predecessor Michael Sharland got it wrong when he wrote in his Tasmanian Birds of 1948 that the flame robin was the family member most likely to be … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The migratory birds have played a waiting game this spring. Usually small numbers of summer visitors begin to arrive from mid-August and numbers build up in the first few weeks of September. This year, however, I have had to ask: where are the cuckoos, the swallows, the martins and the summerbirds, … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
It’s magpie attack time and a particularly aggressive bird is ruffling diplomatic feathers in Canberra. Usually I listen for maggie stories from Tasmania during spring but my attention has been drawn to a breach of entente cordial between the human and natural world in our capital … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The crow is one of nature’s great survivors, and the bird’s growing population is testament to its ability to outsmart those who want to do it harm. They’re smart, crows, there’s no doubt about it. Corvid intelligence is equal to that of primates and I need no evidence of this fact when the crow I … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
For more than 20 years I have watched the breeding cycle of welcome swallows at the Waterworks Reserve but the chain of events looks like being broken this year. The BBQ hut in which the swallows build their mud-cup nest has been removed to facilitate engineering works at the reserve and I fear the … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
© Donald Knowler 2018. All rights reserved.