Don Knowler

A juvenile yellow-tailed black cockatoo called from the garden, demanding food from its parents. I lie on my bed engrossed in a book and I must confess I couldn’t be bothered to go to the window to view the cockatoo family, let alone put on shoes to go out into the garden.  Parties of black cockies had been coming and going all week, criss-crossing the sky above my home, uttering their melancholy song – which some describe as an Irish lament, a “keen” – as they passed … [Read more...] about Familiarity breeds contempt

I might have named the backwaters of the Huon River “swan lake” after the black swans that I find there but I have another name for an expanse of water where wildfowl gather. I call the waters of Lake Barrington in the north of the state “duck pond” because of the large number of Australian wood duck I always see there.   After paying closer attention to black swans this year, I have also been looking anew at the wood duck, another waterbird that is so common it goes … [Read more...] about Beauty in the hunter’s sights

I received a phone call from the Mercury during the late summer asking me if I could identify a young bird that had been photographed by staff photographer Sam Rosewarne. When the image arrived I could not only name the species positively but the precise location where the picture was taken. It just so happened that I had been monitoring the very nest that had produced the youngster. I had to confess that if I hadn’t seen the chick in question grow from a grey, downy … [Read more...] about Sparrowhawks at home in the suburbs

Rain lashed against my bedroom window but that was not to deter me from the annual Birdlife Tasmania shorebird count. I checked my phone before leaving and there was no message to say the count had been called off, so I was on my way. The organisation has been counting birds around Tasmania’s shores for half a century and this data has already proven invaluable in assessing shorebird numbers, and drawing up strategies for their protection. I was determined to play my part. … [Read more...] about Count on a shore thing

RAIN lashed the Lauderdale Oval, but a band of nature-lovers and a white-faced heron were not to be deterred.  Wind and rain seemed appropriate for the excursion on this occasion. The object of the summer exercise was after all the study of probably the most neglected and misunderstood environment in the world of nature: the saltmarsh. Born of storm and tide, it’s a vital habitat for fish, birds and insects so who was complaining about a little rain. Amid welcome swallows … [Read more...] about Salt of the earth