Don Knowler

For the first time in a decade more than 100 orange-bellied parrots have travelled from Tasmania’s south-west to their wintering grounds along the Victorian and South Australian coasts. But the joy of researchers and volunteers at seeing a dramatic rise in the population of the critically-endangered species has been tempered by the restrictions placed on the movement of mainland birders who are critical to monitoring the parrots during the winter months. All the same, such … [Read more...] about Hopes rise for orange-bellied parrots

The flight of the woodswallows passed me by this year, Coronavirus isolation cutting short my own flight to even near-distant places. The migrant dusky woodswallows come through on migration in spring and autumn but it is the movement prior to winter that attracts attention. This is the time when the woodswallows fly high in the sky, wheeling and turning in their rapid hunt for flying insects. In contrast, at the height of the breeding season in summer they tend to keep a … [Read more...] about Woodswallows on their way

The pandemic period of self-isolation has forced me to pay attention to birds I do not usually give a second glance – house sparrows. Peering out of the window, watching the cheeky sparrows squabbling on the garden lawn one autumnal afternoon, I suddenly realised I had never determined what sparrows actually eat, beyond their cadging crumbs inside and outside Banjo’s bakery in Salamanca Square. I have written in the past of the smart, crafty sparrows working out how the … [Read more...] about Crumb of comfort for sparrows

A group of bird nerds – popularly known as “twitchers” – were all a twitter last month when a species normally seen in the tropics and sub-tropics, the eastern koel, was heard calling from a tree in Hobart. An office worker who grew up in northern New South Wales heard the distinctive, far-carrying cry of a koel while eating a sandwich in the heart of the city, Franklin Square. There could be no mistake about the source of the loud, ascending call which usually rings out as … [Read more...] about Eastern koel in the ‘twitchersphere’

The elegant black swans which gather in their hundreds on the Bridgewater stretch of the Derwent at this time of year have certainly been given a bad press during the Coronavirus crisis. How come the pandemic ravaging the world has been called a “black swan” event? The global chaos has nothing to do with swans, of course. The devastating virus causing havoc throughout the world in recent months is also not related to the “bird flu” which struck some years back. The term … [Read more...] about Black swans receive a bad press