Pigeons frighten me. They are the stuff of nightmares. They don’t come in the dead of night, pecking, cooing and fluttering, bobbing their heads; waking me. The spectre of the pigeon comes by day in Hobart, strutting in the shopping mall, in alleyways and lanes. I’ve been a bird-watcher all my life but the feral pigeon is one bird I can’t get to grips with. When I see pigeons in the city, I wonder why I am a bird lover at all, they make me recoil in horror. Perhaps it’s the … [Read more...] about A flight through psychedelic skies
New Nature Writing
I strayed from the path of traditional, or pastoral, nature writing years ago when I discovered not only urban landscapes rich in wildlife, but anthropomorphism, irony, and bottles of red wine and bourbon with birds on their labels. As a young reporter, I had been impressed by the New Journalism of the 1960s which took reporting into the realm of the novel and short-story and a few decades on I found what were termed New Nature Writers breaking with tradition and exploring similar territory.
Although I still treasure the book that was my introduction to words about nature, Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selbourne published in 1788, I now find inspiration in one of the new journalists, Hunter S Thompson. Thompson might not have written of nature as such but his words “I write with rage and ink” have an irresistible resonance that carries far beyond the suburbs to the wooded hills of the horizon.
The man on the mountain
I was the man on the mountain, standing on a rocky outcrop as the snows of a blizzard swirled around me. Seduced as I often am by the mountain’s beauty, I had driven to the Springs for a walk to Sphinx Rock. The sun had shone strong and hard on the Organ Pipes when I set out and, as so often happens, the weather changed during the 20-minute drive from Hobart to the Springs. First cloud, then freezing rain and within minutes a raging blizzard. By this time I had reached … [Read more...] about The man on the mountain
Hair of the fox
Don Bentley sprawled out under the spreading boughs of a stringybark gum. He had a bottle of Barking Owl shiraz and a ham and cheese sandwich and was seeking a quiet moment to himself on his day off from work: a spot of lunch and a few glasses of good red, the birds singing around him, spring in the air. It had been an impossibly hard week at the Chronicle newspaper and he needed to chill out. Bentley didn’t even take a book or a newspaper up to the Waterworks Reserve in … [Read more...] about Hair of the fox
Written in the stars
HENRY the heron came strolling down our street and there was rejoicing in the neighbourhood. He hadn't been seen all year but we knew he would be back. He always arrived with the first hot weather of spring to patrol the streets of our Hobart suburb, looking for a tasty meal of skinks. Zoologists say we should not anthropomorphise birds and animals, however some creatures of the wild, like penguins and herons, cry out to be given human characteristics. They appear to mirror … [Read more...] about Written in the stars
My hero Gilbert White
WILDLIFE documentary-maker David Attenborough was once asked what was his favourite bird out of all the thousands of species he had seen on his travels worldwide. He did not have to cup his hand to his chin in classic pose to think about it. He had an instant answer, all the while looking wistfully out of the window of his suburbanLondon home, to the garden beyond. The bird wasn’t the wandering albatross that circumnavigates the globe on wings with a span 3.5 metres, the … [Read more...] about My hero Gilbert White