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  The rising sun had painted the sky in hues of pinks and blues, and I was walking a beach thinking of another time, if not another place. It was the year of 1832, and a fearsome dog called Jowler was tugging at its chains, trying to chase a hooded plover straying a little too close to its kennel. My thoughts had wandered like my footprints in the wet sand at Eaglehawk Neck’s sweeping beach, where I had gone in search of Tasmania’s convict history, putting … [Read more...] about Birds-eye view of history

OUR connection with the birds all around us can be found in the strangest of places but none as strange as the workings of a mechanical excavator. I had a curious bird-watching experience at the end of winter when contractors arrived to shore up the elevated dirt drive of my home, which after heavy rains had begun to subside into my garden.   I watched in fascination all morning at the skill of the excavator operator as he dug a trench in the narrow confines of our drive, … [Read more...] about Birds and humans flock together

The fan-tailed cuckoo sat low in a white peppermint gum on the slopes of Mt Wellington, surveying the steep hillside that fell away before him. Unlike me, he was not there for the view. He was hatching a dastardly plan. I had heard the trilling, descending song of the cuckoo as I searched for a Bassian thrush’s nest I had discovered last year near Sphinx Rock half-way up the mountain and was wondering if the birds would use the same site again. At first I didn’t stop to try … [Read more...] about Cuckoos hatch a dastardly plan

The welcome swallows were late in making an appearance in my valley this year – September 3rd instead of September 2nd. Spring might officially arrive on the first day of September but on the Knowler calendar it is always the second day of September. Only once in a decade have the swallows missed their deadline and that was an exceptional year with storms and southerly winds in the first week of September which no doubt halted the swallows’ progress from their wintering … [Read more...] about Spring arrives on swallows’ wings

  The chatter of birds, optimistic and cheerful at the end of winter, carried across the saltmarsh but  all the same there  was a  sense  of  melancholy and loss in the spring air. Amid the cacophony of birdsong, of melody in the marshes, piping from the rockpools, a once-familiar sound was missing - the buzzing of the orange-bellied parrot. The Borrow Pit amid the Werribee wetlands in Victoria is noted for  sightings of orange-bellied parrots but this September the … [Read more...] about Parrot melancholy in the air