For more than 20 years I have watched the breeding cycle of welcome swallows at the Waterworks Reserve but the chain of events looks like being broken this year. The BBQ hut in which the swallows build their mud-cup nest has been removed to facilitate engineering works at the reserve and I fear the swallows will lose their innate memory of this site when the works are completed after the breeding season has ended in late summer. Swallows tend to return to the same nest site … [Read more...] about Swallows lose their summer home
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.
US veterinarian makes his mark
As the United States reeled from the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York 20 years ago this week, an American veterinarian found himself stranded in Tasmania unable to return home. An expert on the rehabilitation of injured birds, James Harris had been attending an international veterinary conference in Hobart and during the shutdown of the US air routes he and his wife decided to explore Tasmania. On these excursions they discovered a land rich in … [Read more...] about US veterinarian makes his mark
Forget the Olympics, cuckoo has record of its own
As the Olympics wound down into the second week of August I had my attention on a statistic and record of another kind. I was keen to improve on my first sighting of a cuckoo at the end of winter. Although welcome swallows might be the official bird of spring – and I take note of the dates of their arrival, too – the fan-tailed cuckoo is always the first of the migrants to arrive in my neighbourhood. As soon as I hear the cuckoo’s persistent trilling coming from the forest … [Read more...] about Forget the Olympics, cuckoo has record of its own
Netherworld beneath the rushing traffic
Beneath the rushing traffic on the Sorell causeway at Midway Point exists a netherworld that most drivers and cyclists will never see. It’s a world inhabited by some of the most remarkable wild creatures on the planet, birds capable of ultra-marathon journeys, sometimes straining the limits of endurance in 8000 km non-stop flights. The hidden world of migratory shorebirds has been revealed in recent years by satellite tracking devices which record not only the length of … [Read more...] about Netherworld beneath the rushing traffic
Nature awakes from its slumber
The “Joe Witty” call of the grey shrike-thrush rang through the woods but it was not as strident, resonant and far-carrying as usual. It was the same with the musical chortle of the yellowthroat and the “egypt” territorial call of the crescent honeyeater. A thick carpet of snow on the Pipeline Track below Fern Tree was cushioning all sounds except the steady soft thump of my hiking boots. It was beautiful, surreal, a cliché of a winter’s day, the proverbial picture postcard … [Read more...] about Nature awakes from its slumber