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A short distance from the Club X adult shop and the red-light district on the fringes of St Kilda’s Acland Street, a sexual dynamic of a different kind was taking place. Among the gums and exotic vegetation in St Kilda’s Botanic Gardens a pair of grey butcherbirds were into a second round of mating ritual, after rearing a nest of young earlier in the breeding season. The sexual frolics of humans and birds in St Kilda tell a story of two worlds, at the same time separate and … [Read more...] about Sex in the suburbs

All summer long a grey fantail has sung a lusty, vibrant song from the upper branches of a dogwood tree. The male fantail has only broken off singing to go in search of flying insects, fluttering about the branches like a demented shuttlecock before returning to its favourite perch. The fantail is usually known for a sweet song, a descending melody that seems to drop like falling leaves from the canopy. The fantail in question not only sung this tune, along with the … [Read more...] about The mate who never came

A family of new Holland honeyeaters splashed and played in a birdbath in a neighbour’s garden and as I watched them I realised that these ornamental splash pools represented more than a mere supply of water. Bird baths are sites were birds socialise and build family bonds. They are also places were intense inter-species rivalries play out. Bird baths might be a familiar site in gardens and parks but little is known about the precise role they play in birds’ lives. In a … [Read more...] about Honeyeaters add a splash of colour

“Galleries of pink galahs” goes the song by country music star John Williamson and it was appropriate that as the call of these enigmatic birds rang out over Melbourne I was searching for galleries of my own in the arts district of the city. There was no time for birding on this trip to the mainland, however. It was spurred by the musical Chicago showing there, and a visit to see the latest offerings of the National Gallery of Victoria. All the same three galahs with their … [Read more...] about Galahs defy the bird-brain tag

In a sunburnt country, Australian birds have always known the menace of fire and over the eons have devised strategies to deal with conflagration. This fire season, however, they have been overwhelmed. More than a million birds are estimated to have died in the infernos spreading through Australia’s southern and south-eastern states since early spring. At least 60 species have been seriously affected by the fires, some of the rarer ones being pushed towards … [Read more...] about Menace in a sun-burnt country