You can’t keep an old birder down and so it was during the last week of October when I took my binoculars and crutches up to the Waterworks Reserve near my home to participate in the Aussie Backyard Bird Count. No matter I was only six days out of hospital after undergoing total knee-replacement surgery. The birds and Australia’s army of birders demanded I do my bit to participate in the annual census of our feathered friends. I wasn’t being quite as brave, or foolish, as … [Read more...] about A home in mankind’s world
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.
Hoodies find paradise lost
The most harried and hindered bird of our beaches – the hooded plover – looked remarkably relaxed when I found a family of them one summer’s afternoon, strutting under a bright blue sky, gentle waves lapping at the shoreline close to their nest. In the past I had only seen the tiny plovers amid throngs of people, the “hoodies” on their short, stout legs trying to keep clear of not just the human beach users, but their dogs, horses and on several occasions, four-wheel-drives … [Read more...] about Hoodies find paradise lost
A bird in the hand
Many years ago when I found a young bird which had fallen from a nest I was confronted by the dilemma many of us face at this time of year – what to do with the little bundle of feathers, flesh and bone lying at our feet. In my case the bird happened to be a kestrel in my native Britain and it crossed my mind to keep it, and perhaps use it for a fledgling interest in falconry I had at the time. I was young then, in my teens, and no doubt influenced by a classic British film … [Read more...] about A bird in the hand
Birdsong and the crack of leather on willow
Spring was in the air as the sweet smell of newly mown grass and linseed oil drifted across the Tasmanian Cricket Association ground on the Domain. Grass cut, bats oiled, the players donning whites at the oval and, in another celebration of the end of winter, welcome swallows sweeping across the pristine turf still coated with early-morning dew. I was not patrolling the pitch and its surroundings to look at the returning swallows, however, and their close relatives, tree … [Read more...] about Birdsong and the crack of leather on willow
Spring migration takes shape
The first piece of what I call the jigsaw of bird migration was put in place in the last weeks of August when I heard a fan-tailed cuckoo calling in the Waterworks Valley. Next day straited pardalotes arrived from the mainland. The swallow might be the traditional harbinger of spring but it is the fan-tailed cuckoos and pardalotes who arrive first, a little later this year on August 18 and 19. I suspect the cold snap that brought snow in late August and early September … [Read more...] about Spring migration takes shape