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 Sunday Tasmanian.
By Don Knowler
Most of the cockies have left the Hobart suburbs with the start of spring, taking mischief and mayhem with them. I’m always sorry to see the big flocks go at the start of September, heading to their happy hunting grounds in country districts. The antics of the sulphur-crested cockatoos keep me … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
My daily ritual of taking a walk on the wild side has a name in Japanese culture, shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing”. I learned this one bright and sunny late-winter’s day when I stopped in the Waterworks Reserve to chat with a visitor photographing birds. The photographer had set out to find the … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
A flock of needletail swifts flew high in the sky, weaving in and out of the clouds. It was a rare sight, these mercurial birds only occasionally coming into view across Tasmania. The arrival of the white-throated needletails in the summer months usually sends birdwatchers into a flutter. I had … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
They say that one swallow does not make a spring but it certainly looked that way on Monday afternoon. A lone welcome swallow had arrived at the Waterworks Reserve as the temperature hit a warm and sunny 21 degrees. My records usually show the swallows arriving around the first weekend of … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Birdwatching is all about time and place and there was no better place to be for a group of international students than the banks of the Sandy Bay Rivulet earlier this month. By chance, the students had arrived for a community conservation initiative just as the first birds of spring were arriving … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Morning has broken, like the first morning. Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird. A recollection of Judith Durham singing the hymn Morning has broken came to me the moment I turned on the television news on August 5 to hear of her death. By coincidence blackbirds mentioned in the hymn were … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
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