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A flock of parrots teaching each other to swear or a pair of emus being banned from an outback pub. It’s the silly season when I look back at the past 12 months and choose my bird story of the year. Looking at the clippings I’ve collected during 2020 it’s surprising just how many bird stories make their way onto television, radio and into the national and local press. On my reckoning it’s a surprising three a week. And for a bird and animal lover there are gems among them … [Read more...] about Swearing by shifty shades of grey

The internationally acclaimed Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart is being described as “wild and wacky” in the publicity material directed at mainlanders to announce Mona’s re-opening on Boxing Day after lockdown. The same can be said of Tasmania’s birds. Where else would you find the “turbo chook” and the “chuck bird”? Most, if not all, of Tasmania’s endemic species would sit well as exhibits at Mona, if not just for their curiosity, for their sublime beauty. Although … [Read more...] about Realm of the ‘turbo chook’

For years I have struggled to answer a reader’s query about whether some species of cuckoo return to collect their young after they have been raised by surrogate parents. The query has been partly answered by the discovery this spring that one of the cuckoo species visiting Tasmania during the breeding season, the pallid cuckoo, does indeed return to take over the parenting of their fledglings after they have been raised by other birds. I’m indebted to BirdLife Tasmania … [Read more...] about Secrets of the pallid cuckoo revealed

It was difficult to believe that the bird resting in front of me on a Tasmanian beach – a bundle of feather and bone weighing less than a small pack of frozen peas – had only recently completed an epic 14,000 kilometre fight. The bar-tailed godwit sat with another of its species amid a patch of dune grass squeezed between sea, sand and a barbed-wire fence protecting a vital shorebird resting and breeding site on the South Arm. The two birds displayed juvenile plumage, … [Read more...] about Ultra-distance traveller comes to grief

Although thousands of wild birds each year have bands attached to their legs to plot their travels, only a tiny fraction of these are recovered. But when they do turn up they can reveal some remarkable statistics. One banding success story concerns a Tasmanian silver gull straying far from home to reach Queensland. Not only that, the gull has broken records for the longevity of the species. It was found to be at least 29 years old. The story of the silver gull starts on … [Read more...] about Gull in a tangle springs a surprise