Every cloud has a silver lining, and so it was with a shock report earlier this year that revealed birds were vanishing faster in Australia than anywhere else in the world. The international survey might have drawn attention to the growing number of species slipping towards extinction but it also revealed one place on the planet – MacquarieIsland – where the situation had been dramatically turned around. The island has been the subject of a $24.7 million program … [Read more...] about Tide turns for Macquarie Island
On The Wing
Passport to birdland
Birdland is a magical place where it’s possible to escape all the pressures and stresses of the environment of the city created and inhabited by one species – humans – and immerse yourself in a less one-dimensional world. Birdland is nowhere in particular, and does not have to be special or noteworthy. It could be in the wildest of wild forest, or in suburbia. It could be a pristine beach, a few hectares of eucalypt woodland, or a neatly manicured city park. It could be a backyard. That’s the magic of birds; they bring beauty and wonder to every corner of the planet, wild or untamed, and my On the Wing writing is their celebration.
Curlews lost to the wind
A SENSE of doom and gloom takes flight each winter as bird-watchers in Tasmania contemplate the fate of the shorebirds they waved off on migration at the end of the Tasmanian summer. Fewer and fewer of the shorebirds that travel all the way from Tasmania’s wetlands to breed within the Arctic Circle are returning each year to spend the summer here, as they have done for millennia. A staggering decrease in some numbers of shorebirds has been known to members of BirdLife … [Read more...] about Curlews lost to the wind
White goshawk having a whale of a time
The white goshawk flew in wide spirals, catching the thermals rising from the sun-drenched lowlands between sea and mountain. The goshawk had come into view as I scanned the far-flung ocean looking for, of all things, whales. The Mercury had reported in recent days that the whale season was underway with about 60 humpback and southern right whale sightings. It might have seemed a little fanciful to climb up to Sphinx Rock on the south-east side of Mt Wellington looking to … [Read more...] about White goshawk having a whale of a time
Bruny bird festival takes flight again
Bird festivals have become an international phenomenon in recent years but there is only one that can lay claim to having an endangered bird literally on its doorstep. The Bruny Island Bird Festival might not be the biggest - that honour goes to Birdfair in Britain which attracts more than 20,000 birders annually – but it can boast not just lectures and bird tours, but a sighting of the forty-spotted pardalote. “Forty-spot” is one of the rarest birds in world with its … [Read more...] about Bruny bird festival takes flight again
Lament for a life lost
Black cockatoos – their mournful cry carrying far and wide – intruded on a day which should have been free of birds, one devoted to another favourite subject of mine, Victorian history. I was in the middle of a tourist presentation called Louisa’s Walk, a stroll intoTasmania’s convict past that embraces the Cascades Gardens in South Hobart and the nearby site of the Cascade Women’s Factory, when the yellow-tailed black cockatoos paid our party a call. The life of Irish … [Read more...] about Lament for a life lost