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
Eleven of the 12 Tasmanian birds found nowhere else on earth can be spotted with ease at the Waterworks Reserve just a few kilometres from the Hobart CBD. It was an interesting talking point when I was asked to discuss the avian treasures of the reserve on the ABC Radio Drive program recently. The … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
High in the sky, a white goshawk battled wild winds and the attention of an angry kelp gull. Flying against the backdrop of a snowy kunanyi/ Mt Wellington, the all-white goshawk might have believed the peak offered it camouflage as it patrolled the airways. But the raptor was mistaken. Its … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The godwits that arrive in Tasmania and New Zealand each summer are known for their epic flights that span the far north and south of the globe. One plucky godwit, however, has stretched the limits of endurance by finally arriving in New Zealand after being forced to make a dramatic U-turn back to … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The “bully boys” of the bird world, noisy miners, were muscling up one afternoon when a flock of starlings strayed onto their patch outside the Hobart Aquatic Centre on the Domain. The starlings didn’t stand a chance when they arrived to hunt insects in the mown grass surrounding the pool complex. … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Terry the turbo-chook fixed me with a long, curious stare. He stood alone on a wet patch of grass just inside the Waterworks Reserve, set back from the road so he would not be unduly disturbed. The idea of a single bird out of the flock – a loner – seemed foreign to the avian world where most … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
I thought the winter would never end with snow seeming to linger forever on kunanyi/Mt Wellington into the second half of October but the sighting of summerbirds told me that summer had finally arrived. Forget spring and autumn, in 2021 I decided to divide the year into just two seasons, winter … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
© Donald Knowler 2018. All rights reserved.