Karrkkanj is a term for the Black Kite but can also be applied to two other raptor species, the Peregrine Falcon and the Brown Falcon, Professor Evans explains. The Peregrine Falcon can also be known more specifically as ngalmirlangmirlang and the Brown Falcon as wunwunbu; these are said to be husband and wife. Karrkkanj is also ritually significant as the one who founded the Lorrkkon mortuary cycle.
Mark Carter and Chris Watson: "We were able to compare our recorded call to other examples of Night Parrot whistle calls from WA. While there is not an exact match, the calls from WA Night Parrot and the bird recorded in the NT are very similar."
The local pair of Willy Wagtails have taken advantage of the great season we are having in the centre this year and so far have raised two clutches, and I'll expect that, as prime examples of avian opportunism in the desert, they may raise another couple yet in this season.
The other week I came back from town on one of those 40C+ days to a mad flurry of wings and panic calls that can only signal interloper ... or predator. This Little Crow Corvus bennetti was trying to cool down in the water but was being harried by the adult Willy wagtails
A few of the birds that passed by my lens while I was camped at one end of the Longreach Waterhole just west of the small NT town of Elliott..
"We think it is incredible this bird thought out the whole operation from catching a crab to converting into a bigger prey of a fish--and resisted the temptation to just eat the crab," Suzanne Hills and Chris Cromey.
En-route back to Mojave from Sacramento last Sunday I stopped in at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve, one of a chain of wildlife reserves throughout the extensive agricultural region of the Central Valley.
Use of fire as a tool is normally considered to be restricted to humans, and hence to have played an extremely important role not only in human societal change but also in the large-scale modification of landscapes across the world. But what if animals other than humans exhibit pyrophilic behavior?
Crow is a creature who is intensely curious about everything to do with funerals and so, as befits their elaborate ceremonial, he is a skilled dancer and musician. He perches on hollow log coffin, called there by two names, Badurra and Maraych, just as, in fact, Djambidj owners have crow painted on the top of their ossuaries.
That’s what this part of Arnhem Land is like. Other places are all right but here in the middle you’ve got to talk to the country. You can’t just travel quiet, no! That’s law for the centre of Arnhem Land.
