A real highlight for me was catching up with Amadeo Rea, whose magistral book "Wings In The Desert " on the ethnoornithology of the Northern Piman peoples is one of my all time favourites. I'm looking forward to bringing my interview with him to these pages soon.
A few days ago I posted a link on Facebook to a short piece in the Herald Sun about the tragic death of the rarest of Australia's raptors, the White-phase Grey Goshawk, in the Victorian city of Bendigo. This is Robert's wonderful tribute to that bird - written in prescience perhaps long ago but unchanged but for the last line.
Put Spangled and Drongo together and you've really got a name that gives more than the sum of its parts and that rolls off the tough with a laughing question. This morning I had a lay-in on a cool-almost-dry-season morning listening to one chatter senselessly outside my window for an hour or so. Now it would give a call call like a half-stifled sneeze, then some scolding raucous chatter reminiscent of a strangled cat followed by what sounds like a wire being tunelessly plucked and stretched.
I’ve been camping with a few mates in the Gippsland lakes for he past week or so and on the rare day of good sun I caught up with a few of the local waterbirds, including one of my favourites, the Pied Oystercatcher. Here are some pix of Haematopus and his mates … [...]
there were few ground-dwelling birds in my yard until a few months ago when I noticed a brief flash of feathered chestnut skulking in the ferns near the pool. I didn't think much of it at the time until a few days later I saw this most beautiful bird - a Buff-banded Rail Gallirallus philipensis - in full view. Over the next few weeks we got more and more familiar with each other's company. Now it is dead. eaten by neighbourhood cats.
One night King Solomon invited all the birds to sing to his noble guests. All came except the hoopoe. Angry, the king ordered a search, and when the hoopoe was found and rebuked, the bird explained that he was not guilty of disrespect. On the contrary, for the last three months he had hardly tasted any food or water, flying all over the world to discover if any place existed which was not yet subject to Solomon. Finally he found the land of Sheba, ruled by a beautiful and wise woman called Queen Balkys, where they have not heard the name of Solomon.
Earlier this week I drove out to the west coast of the NT’s Gulf of Carpentaria for work. On the first morning out bush I was lucky enough to be up before dawn and wandered down to the foreshore to see what might wander past and into my camera. I’d seen a pair [...]
The male bird floats effortlessly in broad and lazy circles before me, the black terminal tail band stark against the soft creaminess and coppery...nankeen...colours of his underwing plumage. As he crosses before the sun these colours glow backlit and glorious. Does he see me?
Is our landscape one shaped by humans and weather forces or might other agents - like birds - be in part responsible for the spread of fire across our landscapes? There are more questions here than answers...so far.
Female Superb Fairy-wrens Malurus cyaneus initiate extragroup fertilizations by forays to the territory of preferred males, just before sunrise, 2–4 days before egg laying. Over a prolonged breeding season, males advertise their availability to foraying females by singing during the dawn chorus.
