On The Wing

Watching the elegant oystercatchers probing an expanse of mudflats at Cornelian Bay I found it hard to imagine that anyone would want to do them harm. I always head to the shores of the Derwent when I need a pied oystercatcher “fix” but my latest shorebird excursion to Cornelian Bay coincided with a disturbing report from New Zealand. A closely related species, the South Island oystercatcher, had raised the ire of commercial clam collectors there who called for its cull. In … [Read more...] about Oystercatchers off the hook in clam mystery

“Old blue eyes” is the name an older generation still gives to a singing star of yesteryear, Frank Sinatra. But I knew an old mariner in England once – a fan of both Sinatra and sea shanties – who reserved the name for a spectacular seabird, the gannet. I couldn’t understand what he was talking about at first until sailing across the English Channel I saw a northern gannet close up, flying alongside the ferry. Yes, the bird had the most beautiful eyes imaginable. This was … [Read more...] about The eyes have it for gannet flu resistance

With a deadly strike, a heron speared a fish in a rockpool along the Sandy Bay Rivulet. I had been watching the white-faced heron from the bridge on Parliament St and was so close I could actually see the species of fish that had been swallowed whole by the hungry bird. It was a climbing galaxias (Galaxias brevipinnis). A hungry heron spearing a fish, nothing particularly unusual in that, a regular occurrence in the waterways of Hobart. But that morning I had read a report … [Read more...] about Tide turns on wonder of waterways

Out on the stippled waters of the one of the reservoirs at the Waterworks Reserve something a little different stirred. I could tell summer was making way for autumn because a seasonal traveller had arrived – a hardhead duck. The male was still in its breeding plumage and in the soft early-morning sunlight it looked a treat. Chocolate head on a textured brown body, blue-black beak with a silver tip and a distinctive white eye, which gives the species its second name, … [Read more...] about Hardhead headache for tixidermists

A splashing and dunking, a spray of water droplets sparkling golden in the late-afternoon sun. A passing parade of birds were taking a dip. In terms of a birding hotspot this bathing pool did not look much. The birds knew otherwise. A fallen wattle was spread across the shallow waters of the Sandy Bay Rivulet where the watercourse weaves its way through the foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington. The silver wattle’s twiggy, clustered upper branches trapped a pool of water and … [Read more...] about A splash and a dunk in cool waters