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 Sunday Tasmanian.
By Don Knowler
A pair of Pacific black ducks seen wallowing in a puddle on the Parliament Lawns may well have been there on official business. Inside the sandstone building MPs were in debate about rowdy and aggressive ducks causing havoc. Not just any old ducks. The debate centred on mallards originally … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Superb fairywrens have a special significance for the Knowler family because 25 years ago they skipped ahead of us as we were walking down the mudstone drive of what would ultimately become our new home. We had been house-hunting after arriving in Hobart from Queensland, and we like to think the … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
At a time when the question of immigration – illegal or otherwise – is grabbing headlines in western countries, migrants of a different kind have flown under the radar to take up residence in Britain. The suburban and urban streets across southern England are alive with avian foreigners – … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
All eyes are on the skies during World Migratory Bird Day on May 9 to see if a remarkable long-distance record – a non-stop flight of 13,560 km – can be beaten. The record was set by a bar-tailed godwit which travelled from the place of its birth in Alaska to Tasmania two years ago. Although the … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
In the parlance of my craft, journalism, young reporters are urged to make their stories “sing”. Attending the opening of bird artist Belinda Kurczok’s latest exhibition, it occurred to me that the same applied to her art. Her birds, especially a painting of playful swift parrots, are alive, full of … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
It started out as a mission to win a bet and turned into a walk to remember in the wild. The bet with a birding friend centred on whether the Octopus Tree on kunanyi/Mount Wellington is a swamp gum or a gum-topped stringybark. Within a half hour or so tramping the Shoobridge Track, the identity of … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
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