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
The magpie wasn’t slow in coming forward, as the expression goes. It tapped on the window of a friend’s home, demanding to be fed. I was in magpie mode on a trip to Launceston. The species might be common across both farm and suburb in Tasmania but they are absent from my neighbourhood in … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The “odd couple” intrigued me all summer. The oystercatcher pair flew to roost each evening on the tin roof of the boatsheds jutting into the Derwent off Sandy Bay Rd close to the casino. They’d vanish each morning but sometimes on my keep-fit walk through Lower Sandy Bay I’d seen them again resting … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The musk lorikeets hustled and bustled at the heart of a bottlebrush, hanging upside down to get at the pollen in the bush’s crimson flowers. During a power walk along the shore of Montrose Bay I had been stopped in my tracks by the cheerful antics and beauty of the lorikeets. When they balanced on … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Tree martins on a late summer evening dived and dunked into the stippled waters of the twin reservoirs at the Waterworks Reserve, sending up golden splashes that reflected the last rays of a dying sun. The sunset provided a backdrop to the martin manoeuvres and, strangely, I recalled an exploding … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
Listening to a boobook owl calling from the forest above my home in the Waterworks Valley during the spring I didn’t realise at the time this very bird could have just arrived from the mainland. What’s more, it could have flown a remarkable 250 kilometres non-stop across Bass Strait. Although … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
By Don Knowler
The slender-billed curlew is no more and the birding world is in mourning. The curlew has just been officially declared extinct – the first known global bird extinction from mainland Europe, North Africa and West Asia. Although this curlew species has an historic distribution far from Australia, … [Read More...]
Filed Under: On The Wing
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