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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

I thought collecting birds’ eggs was a thing of the past, confined to the dark side of natural history. So I was shocked to read in the Mercury a few weeks ago that federal wildlife officials had cracked a massive case of wildlife trafficking involving eggs. The seizure of more than 3000 eggs from a Hobart home made national headlines with investigators tracking the source and market for the eggs, believed to include endangered Tasmanian species such as the forty-spotted … [Read more...] about Investigators crack massive case of birds’ egg theft

It’s the most spectacular of Tasmania’s birds. A gem of a creature which sparkles and shines as it dashes about the state’s West Coast waterways. The azure kingfisher has always been in my sights but for years I had not had the opportunity to search for it, beyond a cursory hunt along the banks of the Gordon River out of Strahan one summer. Now the hunt was on in Bathurst Harbour in the far south-west with tourist cruise operator, Pieter van der Woude, whom I think was as … [Read more...] about Stunned by a flash of light