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Imagine completing a long-haul flight to the other side of the world and returning to find you have lost your home. Jet-lagged and exhausted, you have nowhere to sleep or rustle up a meal. This is the reality for increasing numbers of migratory birds who arrive at their breeding grounds to find them destroyed by agricultural, industrial and housing development or pollution. Hazards from human development also mean many birds are killed in collisions with buildings and … [Read more...] about Long-haul shorebird flight to uncertainty

Using the lexicon of the Swinging Sixties, I was determined not to be considered “square” in my teens. My childhood passion for birds had taken a backseat in my later teenage years when the Beatles and girls entered my environment. “Square” represented the opposite of “groovy” when the Fab Four entered the fray but more than half a century on, with birds at centre stage, the term has taken on a new meaning. This has absolutely nothing to do with music. In an age where I am … [Read more...] about Hip to be square in bird-friendly garden

The birds know it, the animals know it and so do we. Spring is in the air, a visceral sensation, even the silver wattles are stirring, feeling the urge to break into flower. It’s the time of the year when we realise we are truly at one with nature. No need for a calendar to announce winter is about to come to an end. We feel spring all around us, it stirs, rouses us, quickens our step. And birds erupt in song. As if by intuition, I felt compelled on the sunny, warm morning … [Read more...] about Spring unfurls in flower and song

I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea, an ocean of sulphur-crested cockatoos dividing in front of me so I could walk between the birds. It was not a new occurrence, my Biblical moment when Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. It happens every winter on the embankments of the twin reservoirs at the Waterworks Reserve after the cockies have arrived in autumn to establish winter territories. If the arrival of the welcome swallows in the first weekend of September is my harbinger … [Read more...] about Watch out, the cockies are back in town

It was a slice of coastal Australia, a boat ramp under the watchful eye of a pelican, a picture-postcard yellow beach and a nearby stretch of marshland ringing to the cries of shorebirds. I stumbled on the spot when I washed up in South Werribee one early-winter weekend while searching for orange-bellied parrots on their Victorian wintering grounds. I drew a blank with the parrot but found a piece of paradise instead, a wild corner of Australia fighting not to be totally … [Read more...] about Pelican keeps watch over a magical place