Holding the tiny cuckoo in my hand, its warm body nestled in my giant palm, its eyes blinking in bewilderment, I regretted all the nasty things I had said about cuckoos over the years. I had called them the sociopaths of the animal kingdom, loners preying on industrious doting parents, disrupting family life, callously leaving others to bring up their young. The cuckoo modus operandi is well known, of course. Instead of rearing young themselves, a female merely deposits … [Read more...] about Cuckoo finds a reluctant friend
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Journalist scales new heights
The launch of Donald Knowler’s The Shy Mountain by Charles Wooley soon turned into a bunfight after Charles told Knowler to put away his speech and engage in a conversation about the book. Chris Pearce, the owner of the Hobart Bookshop where the launch took place on Wednesday, told Tasmanian Times it was one of the funniest occasions the bookshop had hosted. Here is the speech Knowler didn’t get to make … I’m described as a nature writer, largely because I write the … [Read more...] about Journalist scales new heights
Native-hens make friends in high places
A family of “turbo chooks” scurried across the tree-lined drive leading to Government House confirming what I had come to see – Tasmanian native-hens had taken up residence there. I had written in recent months of native-hens and wood ducks invading the city and here was another example. The hens and ducks were keeping each other company, happily foraging on the manicured grass verge skirting the drive. I had been alerted to the birds’ presence by the Official Secretary to … [Read more...] about Native-hens make friends in high places
Pink robin plays hide and seek
Everyone was seeing pink robins except me. They are my favourite bird, and in past years I have watched them rear families every year. Spring was never complete without them. This season, though, I had “lucked out’’, as birders describe missing a species that they should have seen. It appeared pink robins were everywhere. Three overseas birdwatchers told me so. A man from Denmark said he had spotted them along the Fern Glade Track on kunanyi/ Mt Wellington and two American … [Read more...] about Pink robin plays hide and seek
Fantails and ginger cake
A fantail flitted about our heads, its joyous, reassuring, relaxed warble giving a lie to the delirium and frenzy of spring all about us. Birds dashing to and fro, a symphony of birdsong, males of the species showing off a fresh moult of spring plumage to dazzle the eye. It was one of those glorious early days in spring, when for the first time the sun shines strong and hard to announce that winter has finally been confined to painful memory, when an epidemic of flu and a … [Read more...] about Fantails and ginger cake