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
Being an animal carer can have its rewards, as a nature-lover who lives in my neighbourhood discovered when a magpie she had cared for came to call. Not just the magpie but her first off-spring. The female magpie had been reared to adulthood after it was brought to the carer as a fledgling. It … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Love is in the air. The John Paul Young song rings in my head every time I see flocks of sulphur-crested cockatoos flying over my home. The cockies are noisy and chatty in flight and when I catch up with them a little later at the Waterworks Reserve the males are showing off their striking yellow … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
“You’ve really started something,” said my wife, nervously eyeing nine black currawongs, who were in turn eyeing her through the kitchen window. The currawongs were lined up on the windowsill, fixing her with their mad, bright yellow eyes. Two were tapping on the closed window, another pecking at … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
If Australians think the coronavirus lockdown has been tough, spare a thought for the crows. That is the view of one reader who says that a lack of roadkill – caused by reduced traffic on local roads at the height of the pandemic – had resulted in the crows going hungry. The reader phoned to … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Cold, dank and grey, even the birdsong was muted during the winter solstice? My hands freezing, my feet like blocks of ice, on the shortest day of the year I was about to turn back home after an early-morning foray to the Waterworks Reserve when a flash of fiery red caught my attention. There on … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Swift parrots are known to undertake the longest migration of any parrot worldwide but one bird has taken marathon flight to a new level. Instead of landing at the usual destination of Victoria or southern New South Wales after a flight from Tasmania, the long-distance parrot overshot the Australian … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
© Donald Knowler 2018. All rights reserved.