The ocean teems with life, above and below the surface. Under the waves in Tasmanian waters at this time of the year are some of the biggest creatures known to nature – southern right and humpback whales – and sailing the winds above them, the biggest of birds, the wandering and royal albatrosses. The Mercury has reported in recent weeks big numbers of whales on the move from sub-Antarctic seas to calving grounds along the eastern Australian coastline. At the same time … [Read more...] about Free-for-all in the oceans
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Tide turns for Macquarie Island
Every cloud has a silver lining, and so it was with a shock report earlier this year that revealed birds were vanishing faster in Australia than anywhere else in the world. The international survey might have drawn attention to the growing number of species slipping towards extinction but it also revealed one place on the planet – MacquarieIsland – where the situation had been dramatically turned around. The island has been the subject of a $24.7 million program … [Read more...] about Tide turns for Macquarie Island
Curlews lost to the wind
A SENSE of doom and gloom takes flight each winter as bird-watchers in Tasmania contemplate the fate of the shorebirds they waved off on migration at the end of the Tasmanian summer. Fewer and fewer of the shorebirds that travel all the way from Tasmania’s wetlands to breed within the Arctic Circle are returning each year to spend the summer here, as they have done for millennia. A staggering decrease in some numbers of shorebirds has been known to members of BirdLife … [Read more...] about Curlews lost to the wind
White goshawk having a whale of a time
The white goshawk flew in wide spirals, catching the thermals rising from the sun-drenched lowlands between sea and mountain. The goshawk had come into view as I scanned the far-flung ocean looking for, of all things, whales. The Mercury had reported in recent days that the whale season was underway with about 60 humpback and southern right whale sightings. It might have seemed a little fanciful to climb up to Sphinx Rock on the south-east side of Mt Wellington looking to … [Read more...] about White goshawk having a whale of a time
Hair of the fox
Don Bentley sprawled out under the spreading boughs of a stringybark gum. He had a bottle of Barking Owl shiraz and a ham and cheese sandwich and was seeking a quiet moment to himself on his day off from work: a spot of lunch and a few glasses of good red, the birds singing around him, spring in the air. It had been an impossibly hard week at the Chronicle newspaper and he needed to chill out. Bentley didn’t even take a book or a newspaper up to the Waterworks Reserve in … [Read more...] about Hair of the fox