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MY late mother-in-law always said that when she returned to Australia from foreign travels she did not believe she was home until she heard the sweet flute-like notes of the magpie song. Jean Betts lived in Howrah where the sight of the magpies singing from the lampposts and telegraph wires cemented time and place. She’d even feed the magpies in her garden and stories of magpies dive-bombing passersby on the nearby Clarence Street would bring a smile to her face. In turn I … [Read more...] about Magpies the spirit of Australia

A DAY at the office for Amanda Edworthy involves dangling from pullies and ropes under the spreading canopies of white gums on Bruny Island. It also involves weighing and taking blood samples from one of the world’s rarest birds, the forty-spotted pardalote – all in the name of ensuring the survival of this little Tassie battler. In the parlance of the circus, I’ve dubbed Amanda the magnificent woman on the flying trapeze after being recruited briefly to aid her … [Read more...] about High-wire act to save forty-spots

At the start of winter when the first snows coat Mt Wellington I look for the hoary-headed grebes on the reservoirs at the Waterworks Reserve near my home. The small, graceful birds looking as fragile as snowflakes out there on the vast expanse of water are an apt symbol for the frost and snow-laced months. The thin white stripes on the grebe’s head reminded the first settlers and pioneers of the hoar frosts of the old country, severe winters they thought they had left … [Read more...] about Grebes bring a touch of winter

The haunting call of a boobook owl took me one summer’s night into that parallel universe that is the world of birds.  I have to confess I was a little worse for wear at the time after spending the early evening drinking with former colleagues from the Mercury. When I retired to bed early – leaving my family to watch a program on television – I had no idea that the evening would produce such a momentous event. Deep in blissful sleep, I was suddenly awoken by the … [Read more...] about Boobook springs a surprise

BIRDWATCHERS call them the bogans of the bird world – the common Indian mynas of the mainland which constantly try to mount an invasion of Tasmania’s shores. It might be an unkind epithet for an introduced bird species which does not naturally belong in Australia, but the mynas certainly make enemies wherever they go. I don’t like the term bogan, used either in a human or avian context, but all the bird experts I know happily use it to describe this exotic species which … [Read more...] about There goes the neighbourhood