Don Knowler

The song of summer floated across the valley where I live last month, even though there was snow on Mt Wellington.  The song belonged to a fan-tailed cuckoo and I awoke with a shock. The avid birdwatcher is very attuned to bird song and it is not the first time that I have been woken from my slumbers at first light when, subconsciously in sleep, I have hard something strange and exotic. But a cuckoo in the middle of winter – July 24 to be precise – had me scurrying into the … [Read more...] about Summer comes early

The seasons come and go, as do plumbers, decorators and gardeners but a pair of tawny frogmouths which have made a suburban patio their home take everything in their stride, or should I say their wingbeats. I’m constantly on the look-out for frogmouths in the dry woodlands surrounding Hobart but increasingly in recent years I have found these remarkable birds in the most remarkable of “habitat” away from their natural homes. In fact, the frogmouths of the wider Hobart area … [Read more...] about Winging it in suburbia

A battle to save Australia’s last mainland colony of fairy penguins is being fought on the beaches of Manly in Sydney. Where once there were probably tens of thousands of penguins around Australia’s south-eastern and southern coastlines only about 60 penguins survive in a few coves at the entrance to Sydney Harbour. I took a time-out from a family reunion in Sydney recently to visit the threatened colony, and draw comparisons with the similar, but less bloody, struggle to … [Read more...] about Penguin issue in black and white

In the world of birds, lazy bird-watchers describe small and nondescript birds that are hard to identify as LBBs, or little bird birds. I was surprised to learn recently that in the mysterious and arcane world of mycology, fungi fanatics have their own term for similarly coloured, sized and hard to identify species – LBMs or little brown mushrooms. The term in fact does not relate to a range of species but to just one group or genus,  Tubaria. This contains one of … [Read more...] about The beating heart of the forest

THE hot-chip brigade – the gulls that try to steal our fast food on the waterfront – might be viewed as a nuisance but they are a vital indicator of the heath of the human environment. They are certainly not “rats with wings”, to use a pejorative description used by some members of the community who are not gull fans. Such is the regard that birders give gulls that a dedicated team of Birdlife Tasmania members each year conducts a survey of gull numbers far and wide to … [Read more...] about Gulls enjoy the good life