Archives for January 2020

The cormorant fixed me with a cold state, as icy as the ice-blue of its eyes. The bird had been drying its wings on a slab of rock, off the coast of Bruny Island, and seemed to resent the intrusion, shifting from webbed foot to webbed foot as the boat I was aboard approached. There was no fear in the cormorant’s eyes, however. More wariness, or curiosity, or even annoyance. Who was this strange creature invading its world, its space out there where Storm Bay merges with the … [Read more...] about Cormorant eyes frozen in time

Christmas Day at Cornelian Bay, and a Pacific gull is tucking into his lunch. Or at least trying to. Seafood is also on the menu for me as I tuck into festive fare at a restaurant on the bay. I have Tasmanian mussels on the plate, cooked with tomato, dill and vanilla salsa. The gull has still to prepare his meal, cracking open the mussel shell. The gull had been looking at the forest ravens along the inter-city bicycle track nearby. There the ravens pick up mussels, fly to … [Read more...] about Raven outsmarts the Pacific gull

The ongoing news of nervous residents enduring cracking and crumbling tower blocks in Sydney and Melbourne came to mind when I reviewed a construction project in the Waterworks Reserve. No problem of alleged inadequate design and poor building techniques here. Masters builders were at work, overseen by a master surveyor. It might not be a tower block of concrete, glass and steel, but the welcome swallows applied the basic rules of construction all the same: a firm, solid … [Read more...] about A home built by master builders