One man’s dream of bringing Tasmania’s eagles up close and personal to the state’s schoolchildren is about to be realised with the opening of an educational centre at the Raptor and Wildlife Refuge in Kettering. Eagle expert Craig Webb has spent more than a decade developing the refuge on his 10-hectare property and at the same time has released into the wild countless wedge-tailed and sea eagles brought to him for care. Although saving eagles and other birds of prey has … [Read more...] about Roll up for the “flying gymnasium”
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Return from a perilous journey
The shearwaters swirled around me in the half-light. I could hear the flutter their wings, feel the whoosh of their feathers as they swept past. I had gone to The Neck on BrunyIsland to watch penguins come ashore and had overlooked the fact that short-tailed shearwaters – or muttonbirds as they are called in Tasmania– use the same stretch of Bruny coast as their summer home. Silly of me not to be thinking shearwaters that are so common in Tasmanian waters during spring … [Read more...] about Return from a perilous journey
The quiet achiever defies extinction
The population of the forty-spotted pardalote might be in freefall, seemingly headed to extinction, but the people of Bruny Island are not going to let the little bird die. On a sunny afternoon in the Jetty Café at Dennes Point, Bruny Islanders were talking up the bird they describe as the “quiet achiever”, saying that it was too precious to their community to be allowed to go the way of the dodo. Dennes Point is famous in forty-spot folklore as having the largest … [Read more...] about The quiet achiever defies extinction
That place ‘over the road’
Frankie Allen stood in the lift, his back to the wall, facing the mock-Tudor bar he had just left. He had not looked back when he had pressed the button to summon the lift to the first floor of the Elizabeth Hotel in Johannesburg. Perhaps he didn’t want to look back at the colleagues remaining in the bar, carrying on with their drinking and chatting, carrying on with their lives. But in the split second it took for the lift doors to close Frankie Allen turned around and … [Read more...] about That place ‘over the road’
Marathon bird brings cheer
The bells of Christchurch Cathedral once rang out each September to herald to return of the New Zealand harbinger of spring, the bar-tailed godwit from their breeding grounds within the Arctic circle. The bells might be silent now following the devastating earthquake that destroyed much of the city last year, including the cathedral’s bell tower, but the people of Christchurch still rejoice in the arrival of the godwits. My sister who lives in Christchurch found … [Read more...] about Marathon bird brings cheer