Don Knowler

I search for the beautiful flame robin in spring and invariably turn up its close relative, the scarlet robin. It makes me wonder if my illustrious predecessor Michael Sharland got it wrong when he wrote in his Tasmanian Birds of 1948 that the flame robin was the family member most likely to be seen in Tasmania. Either this, or things have changed on the robin front in the past seventy-odd years.’ Although I see and hear scarlet robins all the time on the green fringes of … [Read more...] about Fanning the flames of passion

The migratory birds have played a waiting game this spring. Usually small numbers of summer visitors begin to arrive from mid-August and numbers build up in the first few weeks of September. This year, however, I have had to ask: where are the cuckoos, the swallows, the martins and the summerbirds, the latter more formally known as black-faced cuckoo-shrikes? True, there had been sporadic sightings of swallows and fan-tailed cuckoos but the great spring migration appeared … [Read more...] about Migrants keep the birders waiting

It’s magpie attack time and a particularly aggressive bird is ruffling diplomatic feathers in Canberra. Usually I listen for maggie stories from Tasmania during spring but my attention has been drawn to a breach of entente cordial between the human and natural world in our capital territory. Japan’s ambassador Yamagami Shingo has reported he lives in fear of magpies in the swooping season. In his latest blog about his role in Australia, “News from under the Southern … [Read more...] about Magpie ‘terror’ stalks the suburbs

The crow is one of nature’s great survivors, and the bird’s growing population is testament to its ability to outsmart those who want to do it harm. They’re smart, crows, there’s no doubt about it. Corvid intelligence is equal to that of primates and I need no evidence of this fact when the crow I feed each day comes to call. She’s worked out what time I rise in the morning and when I’m likely to be sitting at my computer. If I try to ignore her she moves from vantage point … [Read more...] about Resilient ‘crows’ a dark wonder

For more than 20 years I have watched the breeding cycle of welcome swallows at the Waterworks Reserve but the chain of events looks like being broken this year. The BBQ hut in which the swallows build their mud-cup nest has been removed to facilitate engineering works at the reserve and I fear the swallows will lose their innate memory of this site when the works are completed after the breeding season has ended in late summer. Swallows tend to return to the same nest site … [Read more...] about Swallows lose their summer home