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
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
By Don Knowler
As the United States reeled from the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York 20 years ago this week, an American veterinarian found himself stranded in Tasmania unable to return home. An expert on the rehabilitation of injured birds, James Harris had been attending an international … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
As the Olympics wound down into the second week of August I had my attention on a statistic and record of another kind. I was keen to improve on my first sighting of a cuckoo at the end of winter. Although welcome swallows might be the official bird of spring – and I take note of the dates of their … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Beneath the rushing traffic on the Sorell causeway at Midway Point exists a netherworld that most drivers and cyclists will never see. It’s a world inhabited by some of the most remarkable wild creatures on the planet, birds capable of ultra-marathon journeys, sometimes straining the limits of … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The “Joe Witty” call of the grey shrike-thrush rang through the woods but it was not as strident, resonant and far-carrying as usual. It was the same with the musical chortle of the yellowthroat and the “egypt” territorial call of the crescent honeyeater. A thick carpet of snow on the Pipeline … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
© Donald Knowler 2018. All rights reserved.