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Birds are our living link with the past and when I follow in the footsteps of the Victorian artist John Glover on a favourite track on Knocklofty above Hobart I think of the honeyeaters, the robins and flycatchers serenading him as he went on his way.  The last time I walked the track the black-headed honeyeaters were in full voice – as they would have been in Glover’s time – and their piping calls rang through the canopy of wattle and gum on what is officially known as the … [Read more...] about In the footsteps of John Glover

The songbirds are falling silent in Britain and the eerie quietness descending on the woods and fields carries a grim portent for what could happen here if we do not take care of our environment. A recent census of birds in Britain revealed that songbirds especially were vanishing from the landscape in unprecedented numbers and the loss is being lamented as a tragedy for not just Britain’s natural world but for its culture. The British Trust for Ornithology says, if current … [Read more...] about A silence descends on the woods

The sparkling, golden eye of the shoveler caught my attention. It sparkled on the sparkling waters of the Goulds Lagoon on a sunny autumnal day. It had been a disappointing day for birds and now the shoveller, and the sun after clouds and rain, uplifted my spirits. Shovelers are one of my favourite birds and occasionally when I grow tired of the woodland birds nearer home I take a trip along the Brooker Highway to hunt out waterfowl, and particularly the shovelers. I don’t … [Read more...] about A shovelful of beauty

I’VE been an unabashed promoter of Bruny Island in the years I have been writing the “On the wing” column and now I’m delighted to learn that it has been named in a top-10 list of Australia’s most “revered” birdwatching sites. The list was compiled by Australian Birdlife magazine after it asked its 8000 readers to name their favourite birding locations. Bruny Island ranked among Kakadu in the Northern Territory and Lamington National Park in Queensland as bird hotspots. … [Read more...] about Bruny Island a bird mecca

The banded lapwing keeps to the shadows, or should I say to the furrows of ploughed field and rough pasture.  It’s the shy cousin to the more notorious of the lapwing and plover family, the masked lapwing which each spring makes the headlines when it dive-bombs unsuspecting people invading its space in suburbia’s open spaces. The masked lapwing, of course, is more commonly referred to as the “plover” in Tasmania and many people do not realise that it has a similarly-sized … [Read more...] about A bird of the farmland shadows