Don Knowler

The excited screech of rainbow lorikeets tells me I’m on the mainland when I travel beyond Tasmania’s shores. That’s the thing about birds, they speak of time and place, each region has its special birds although the beautiful and cheerful lorikeets are more widespread than most. To my surprise, though, in recent months I’ve discovered that you do not need to visit the mainland for the rainbow lorikeet experience. Walking across Sandown Park in Lower Sandy Bay recently the … [Read more...] about No joy in this rainbow connection

Imagine completing a long-haul flight to the other side of the world and returning to find you have lost your home. Jet-lagged and exhausted, you have nowhere to sleep or rustle up a meal. This is the reality for increasing numbers of migratory birds who arrive at their breeding grounds to find them destroyed by agricultural, industrial and housing development or pollution. Hazards from human development also mean many birds are killed in collisions with buildings and … [Read more...] about Long-haul shorebird flight to uncertainty

Using the lexicon of the Swinging Sixties, I was determined not to be considered “square” in my teens. My childhood passion for birds had taken a backseat in my later teenage years when the Beatles and girls entered my environment. “Square” represented the opposite of “groovy” when the Fab Four entered the fray but more than half a century on, with birds at centre stage, the term has taken on a new meaning. This has absolutely nothing to do with music. In an age where I am … [Read more...] about Hip to be square in bird-friendly garden

The birds know it, the animals know it and so do we. Spring is in the air, a visceral sensation, even the silver wattles are stirring, feeling the urge to break into flower. It’s the time of the year when we realise we are truly at one with nature. No need for a calendar to announce winter is about to come to an end. We feel spring all around us, it stirs, rouses us, quickens our step. And birds erupt in song. As if by intuition, I felt compelled on the sunny, warm morning … [Read more...] about Spring unfurls in flower and song

I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea, an ocean of sulphur-crested cockatoos dividing in front of me so I could walk between the birds. It was not a new occurrence, my Biblical moment when Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. It happens every winter on the embankments of the twin reservoirs at the Waterworks Reserve after the cockies have arrived in autumn to establish winter territories. If the arrival of the welcome swallows in the first weekend of September is my harbinger … [Read more...] about Watch out, the cockies are back in town