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A reader contacted me recently asking if I could identify the “Figaro bird’ that was driving him to distraction on the course of the New Town Bay Golf Club. It was so named because it sounded as if the mystery bird was singing “Figaro, Figaro, Figaro,” as in Amadeus Mozart’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro. “The call is shrill and I hear it every time I play golf at New Town Bay,” wrote the reader, who also identified two streets bordering the hole of the course where it was … [Read more...] about ‘Figaro bird’ in full voice

Every year I delight in the merry twitter and flashing flight of the welcome swallows, especially in the city centre where they fly about the Parliament lawns all summer. But after pausing to watch them in flight there in mid-February alarm bells started to ring – I couldn’t recall seeing swallows on my home turf of the Waterworks Reserve after their initial arrival in the first days of September. For as long as I can recall swallows have always built their mud-cup nests on … [Read more...] about Swallows share common ground

The end of summer, the dimming of the light, does not approach imperceptibly, slowly as might be imaged. It also comes with a chilly blast of wind at the start or end of a sunny day. Usually it also arrives in silence. The birds stop singing, reading the signals that summer is on the wane. This year, however, the autumn announced its arrival in a different form – hardhead ducks turned up earlier than usual on the two reservoirs of the Waterworks Reserve. The changing of the … [Read more...] about Hardheads signal winter

Clean-up Australia Day loomed large on my calendar this year. I should say it was high on the agenda because I was joining volunteers from the Hobart City Council’s bushcare program on a mission to gather rubbish at the summit of kunanyi/Mt Wellington in the first week of March. I had an ulterior motive, though, for being on the mountain which I didn’t reveal to my crew of rubbish-gatherers as we collected our rubber gloves and tongs from the council staff on … [Read more...] about Clean sweep but no flame robins

I’m sitting in a shack at the end of the earth, sipping a steaming cup of tea and viewing one of the rarest birds in the world. I never thought it would come to this, achieving a life-long ambition to see the orange-bellied parrot in relative comfort. For years the only place to observe the parrot with certainty has been the button-grass plains of Melaleuca at the far south-western tip of Tasmania and here I am now. In the past I had resisted the temptation to board a … [Read more...] about Orange-bellied parrot on centre stage