Archives for May 2016

Every time I find a bird feather I can’t resist picking it up and putting it in the band of my bush hat. But next time I tramp one of my favourite habitats – that of the wetland – I’m going to have a different purpose for the iridescent bottle-green flight feathers of the chestnut teal or the stunning blue ones of the purple swamp-hen I find there. A new citizen science program – the Feather Map of Australia – is asking people of all ages to collect and post in feathers they … [Read more...] about Birds of a feather…

I thought I knew all the best bird-watching spots around the city but recently I stumbled, literally, on a new one. The combined Long and Nutgrove Beaches in lower Sandy Bay have made it an autumn to remember, a season when bird-watching tends to take a back seat because of a paucity of birds, with migrants returning to the mainland. I’d never bothered to walk this section of the Derwent coastline before but it proved a convenient spot for rehabilitation walks after total … [Read more...] about Plovers 1, Eagle 0

The birdbaths which decorate gardens up and down suburbia have emerged as an area of conflict for our birds, especially during a summer of drought like the one we have just experienced in Tasmania. The “battle of the birdbath” has been the focus of a nation-wide survey over the past two years to determine which species are able to dominate these unnatural sources of water, and which species are shut out. The results of the survey so far have thrown up some surprising … [Read more...] about The battle of the birdbath

MY biggest bird-watching moment during the summer months just past came with the sight of no less than 12 of the most dramatic of shorebirds, eastern curlew, feeding in mudflats near Midway Point. My delight at seeing the biggest of the waders, however, was tempered by the realisation that I might never again see curlews in Tasmanian waters. Numbers of eastern curlews reaching Tasmania – and indeed many other species of wader – are in freefall and the curlew was last year … [Read more...] about Curlews lost to the wind