The arrival of the last of the migrants – the satin flycatcher – is supposed to signal the official start of the summer season but this year the travellers got their timing horribly wrong. As a male flycatcher sang out from a stringybark on the lower slopes of kunanyi/Mt Wellington, the summit was coated with snow. I didn’t even try to find the bird. The cold drove me home and when I returned next morning more blizzards overnight had brought the snow line down below the … [Read more...] about Gems in the canopy
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.
‘Bunyip’ keeps its secrets
The sleeping beauty had gone to bed, darkness had fallen and I was standing on the main drag in Franklin hoping that the rare bittern would let me know it was about. The bittern lives in the shadow of the “beauty’’ – the stunning mountain feature to the north of the old port nestling on the banks of the Huon – and each year in spring I make a trip there in the hope of seeing this elusive member of the heron family, perhaps the hardest bird to spot in the entire avian … [Read more...] about ‘Bunyip’ keeps its secrets
Beauty along ‘forty-spot’ alley
The road I have dubbed “forty-spot alley’’ winds its way across north Bruny Island to the hamlet of Dennes Point. Although when I drive the dusty dirt road my focus is on one of the rarest birds in the world, the forty-spotted pardalote, I am always struck by the stunning beauty of the route. I happened on it by chance one year, going to spend a day with a scientist doing ground-breaking work on the endangered species, and I found myself driving it again this month at the … [Read more...] about Beauty along ‘forty-spot’ alley
Drama in the air
The rolling birdsong of the forest had suddenly fallen silent and it was clear there was drama in the air. As a female brown goshawk made her way with slow flaps of the wings high above the treetops of the Peter Murrell Reserve in Kingston, from far away a magpie took to the wing, the goshawk in her sights. Although the brown goshawk, possibly the most feared bird of the woods, is used to pushing its weight around, this extra-large female had gotten more than she bargained … [Read more...] about Drama in the air
Name game for native-hens
The Tasmanian native-hens at the end of my garden had been displaying the amorous side to their nature all night. Their mating ritual had started sometime just after midnight and the strangely rhythmic grunts and squawks finished at around 7am, just as the sun flooded the Waterworks Valley with light. I was still a little bleary-eyed when I opened the Sunday Tasmanian later that morning to discover the native-hens were making headlines beyond their goings-on in my … [Read more...] about Name game for native-hens