It’s been a bumper summer for the armchair bird-watcher, the Ashes bringing a new flock of species to the television screen. A magpie-lark at the MCG on Boxing Day was a stand-out, along with a magpie at the Adelaide Oval, but it was equally magical to see welcome swallows swooping and flitting across the Sydney Cricket Ground during the last few days of the cricket series. Swallows – like the ubiquitous silver gulls – are not a rare sight on Australian cricket grounds but … [Read more...] about Swallows out for a duck
Christmas fare on mud and marsh
Christmas Day on the mudflats. A day to remember with plenty of exciting birds and a sea breeze taking the heat out of the sun. After a lunch of turkey and plum pudding at a St Helens hotel I had taken off for an afternoon of holiday bird-watching. I didn’t have to wander far, a vantage point overlooking open water, marsh and mudflat was a short walk along the road to Binalong Bay. Before me lay a tidal pool, an island of saltmarsh and beyond this the wide expanse of … [Read more...] about Christmas fare on mud and marsh
Island-hopping to an ancient home
BIRDS are wondrous global travellers, flying between hemispheres on journeys that defy the imagination. More precisely, they link one land mass to another, island-hopping. Islands have a special significance and fascination for Hobart artist Katherine Cooper. Not only did she grow up on KingIsland but her ancestors come from an island community in the northern hemisphere, from Shetland off the west coast of Scotland. Islands are in her DNA. Cooper first visited Shetland … [Read more...] about Island-hopping to an ancient home
Deadlines and wattlebirds
A subordinate clause here, an eastern spinebill there. A split infinitive on the screen, a silvereye in the bottlebrushes beyond the window of my study. The life of an online sub-editor is not an easy one, not like the days when I worked in the Mercury newsroom which merely offered a view of a red-brick wall enclosing an alley dividing the newspaper building with the post office next door. That alleyway, though, once produced a rare masked owl, roosting by day on a window … [Read more...] about Deadlines and wattlebirds
A fluttering Christmas surprise
An early Christmas present arrived for wildlife carer David Joyce one night early this month. A female frogmouth he raised and released two summers ago returned to show Joyce her offspring. Joyce could hardly contain his excitement in an email he sent me with a picture of the adult frogmouth with her youngster sitting on his balcony in the near darkness. Each frogmouth that Joyce rehabilitates is given a number with the letter “T’, instead of a name. This signifies the … [Read more...] about A fluttering Christmas surprise