Don Knowler

Every autumn when the cold weather begins to bite and I get the sniffles, my friends joke that I might have “bird flu”. The joke is wearing a little thin now in these days of Coronavirus, or Corvid-19, sweeping the world. Bird-watching is these troubled times has actually been far from my thoughts but the pandemic is occupying the mind of the two biggest bird-watching organisations in the world, the Audubon Society in the United States and Britain’s Royal Society for the … [Read more...] about ‘Keep birding’ message in troubled times

Kookaburras are no laughing matter when it comes to what they are doing to Tasmania’s fragile environment. They might appear the lovable larrikins of the bush but they are a bird out of time and place in our state. The kookaburra does not belong here – it’s a creation of the whim, and may I say stupidity that abounded in the last century. Kookaburras are an introduced species, brought here from the mainland where they naturally belong at the time of federation in 1901. The … [Read more...] about Kookaburra ‘joke’ wearing thin

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” goes the Tasmanian joke when drivers spot cockerels strutting at the side of the highway. The joke even featured in a Sunday Tasmanian headline once, when the newspaper carried a story about a notorious hotspot for unwanted cockerels, at the Kingston end of the Southern Outlet. The issue of the rogue cockerels is generally linked to a growing trend to self-sufficiency when people rearing chicks for egg production in backyards are faced … [Read more...] about Long journey for the humble junglefowl

Like the wavering, undulating flight of a forest raven over the Hobart suburbs, a talk I gave to a group of seniors recently wandered off course. “Encouraging Birds to Your Garden” was supposed to be about the importance of growing native plants in suburban and urban backyards but it deviated to the virtues of an introduced species – the humble apple tree. I soon found myself with ardent supporters at the Midcity School for Seniors, with the audience barracking for the … [Read more...] about Seniors talk flies off course

A short distance from the Club X adult shop and the red-light district on the fringes of St Kilda’s Acland Street, a sexual dynamic of a different kind was taking place. Among the gums and exotic vegetation in St Kilda’s Botanic Gardens a pair of grey butcherbirds were into a second round of mating ritual, after rearing a nest of young earlier in the breeding season. The sexual frolics of humans and birds in St Kilda tell a story of two worlds, at the same time separate and … [Read more...] about Sex in the suburbs