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
A pink robin moved ahead of me through the wet forest, hopping from shrub to shrub under the towering canopy of swamp gums in the Styx Valley. By coincidence the route of the robin, and mine, was marked out by ribbons in the same magenta hue as the robin’s breast The circular route about a quarter … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
First kelp gulls dropping mussels from dizzy heights to crack them open, now cormorants learning there can be rich pickings when humans go fishing. Last year I mentioned seeing the street-smart gulls dropping shells on the concrete of the inter-city bike track at Cornelian Bay and now my mail … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Red Chapel Beach, within the sound on a still summer's night of the chimes of the Hobart Post Office clock, has residents who go about their business in a quiet, undemonstrative way, in keeping with the fashionable suburb of Sandy Bay. The residents, in fact, have been so unobtrusive over the … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
It was a glorious day on the Tasmanian wetlands. Golden plovers – an increasingly rare sight – lolled on the saltmarsh and the piping call of pied oystercatchers was carried on a salty breeze. The calm and tranquility was only briefly broken by a passing flash-winged little falcon, or hobby, causing … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Swift parrots come and go during the spring and summer, and you have to be as fleet of foot as they are fleet of wing to catch up with them. The usual happy hunting ground for a swift parrot fix is the blue gum forests of Bruny Island where they are common and easily seen. This year, however, the … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The heron fixed me with a wary, if calm eye. I was so close I could see the yellow of its irises as it stood motionless on a wooden fence post at the Waterworks Reserve. A lone heron, a lone walker. A meeting of minds. The heron and I appeared to be on the same path to self-discovery. I was … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
© Donald Knowler 2018. All rights reserved.