STANDING in a park in London earlier this year – the wood pigeons cooing softly in the branches of an oak above my head – I had a flashback to the first time I became aware of birds and their songs. People often ask me how my interest in birds started and I had always ascribed it to the day a flock of bluetits flew into my classroom shortly after I had started primary school in the early 1950s. I now know it wasn’t that day, because there was no sound beyond the gentle … [Read more...] about Tuned to memory lane
Archives for August 2012
A song for every season
We all have our harbingers of spring. To the farmers it’s the welcome swallow that tells them when to sow, and then when to reap at the end of summer. To the orchardists it is the arrival of the black-faced cuckoo-shrike that signals not only blossom on apple and pear trees in spring, but picking time when the summer birds – as they are known in country districts – retreat to the mainland during the autumn. To me it’s not the actual arrival of spring that is heralded by the … [Read more...] about A song for every season
Free-for-all in the oceans
The ocean teems with life, above and below the surface. Under the waves in Tasmanian waters at this time of the year are some of the biggest creatures known to nature – southern right and humpback whales – and sailing the winds above them, the biggest of birds, the wandering and royal albatrosses. The Mercury has reported in recent weeks big numbers of whales on the move from sub-Antarctic seas to calving grounds along the eastern Australian coastline. At the same time … [Read more...] about Free-for-all in the oceans
Tide turns for Macquarie Island
Every cloud has a silver lining, and so it was with a shock report earlier this year that revealed birds were vanishing faster in Australia than anywhere else in the world. The international survey might have drawn attention to the growing number of species slipping towards extinction but it also revealed one place on the planet – MacquarieIsland – where the situation had been dramatically turned around. The island has been the subject of a $24.7 million program … [Read more...] about Tide turns for Macquarie Island