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 muttonbirds that breed in Tasmania are known for their long-distance flights linking Australia to the far-north of Asia but one bird last year decided to go global in a different direction. In June, a muttonbird was found on a beach in Ireland, making it the first of its species discovered in … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
A new term has entered the bird-watching lexicon thanks to the coronavirus pandemic – home birding. The phrase has been coined by the internationally renowned Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornwell University in the United States to describe how nature-lovers worldwide have coped with lockdown and … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The Pacific gull – in crisp black-and-white plumage with bright orange and yellow bill – has long been regarded as the most beautiful of Australia’s gulls. Because it is largely a marine species it has avoided the tag of “garbage gull”, a fate befalling the silver and kelps gulls which love to … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
A flock of parrots teaching each other to swear or a pair of emus being banned from an outback pub. It’s the silly season when I look back at the past 12 months and choose my bird story of the year. Looking at the clippings I’ve collected during 2020 it’s surprising just how many bird stories make … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The internationally acclaimed Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart is being described as “wild and wacky” in the publicity material directed at mainlanders to announce Mona’s re-opening on Boxing Day after lockdown. The same can be said of Tasmania’s birds. Where else would you find the “turbo chook” … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
For years I have struggled to answer a reader’s query about whether some species of cuckoo return to collect their young after they have been raised by surrogate parents. The query has been partly answered by the discovery this spring that one of the cuckoo species visiting Tasmania during the … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
© Donald Knowler 2018. All rights reserved.