The full story of the Princess Parrots, and those who are frantically seeking them, will have to wait for another day. The recent influx of birders into the Centre, and the restrictions they face accessing the Aboriginal lands that the birds are currently on, prompted my mate Christopher Watson to spend a day travelling around Alice Springs trying to get as many birds as possible in a day's drive close to town.
Gary Lang is a Larrakia man and his forebears have lived with Magpie Geese in their country around what is now called Darwin for thousands of years. This performance is at once a blessing and an acknowledgment of the importance - economically, culturally and spiritually - of the Magpie Goose to Gary's family and kin. It is also a joyous tribute to the dogged resilience of culture in country that has been stolen from beneath the feet of his people.
It is clear, to me at least, from looking at the winners above and the impressive works by all the finalists on display at the Museum and Art Gallery, that this show reveals the true strengths and immense value and integrity not only of the many art centres scattered around this country, but also of the artists and their arts practices.
In the Territory the stories are all too common...backpackers in vans swerving to avoid a wallaby of a basking lizard or a stubborn eagle feasting on roadkill, losing control in the dirt, over-correcting, rolling over and over 'til they come to permanent rest in the the scrub...
Where do we find Raven?..." the story begins. "... When you want to find Raven, you look for him at the top of the tree, where he often sits, his eyes always moving, always looking and looking, gazing out across his world, watching for some mischief to get into or something to eat..."
This female Pallid Cuckoo Cacomantis pallidus has been hanging around my front yard for the past week or so and I had the chance to grab a few pix of her this afternoon. She lacks the very distinctive, and often distinctly irritating, call of the male of this species. […]
The Bush Turkey Tjukurrpa is one of two major Tjukurrpa to pass through the country of the Spinifex People. It is a Tjukurrpa that is seen by other Western Desert people as belonging to the Spinifex people...The Wati Kipara...involves the travels of an old Bustard who attempts to steal the world's fire and drown it in the ocean at Madura. The Wati Kipara Tjukurrpa involves excruciating physical punishment, murder, betrayal, sex, deceit and intrigue, but the details of these events remain secret and privy only to senior men.
The penalties for the unauthorised possession of wildlife in the NT are high - for an individual the maximum penalties range from $65,000 to $130,000 and are of course much higher for corporate offenders.
Further to my previous post here on the 33rd Society of Ethnobiology meeting at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island, the following week I traveled up to the small resort town of Tofino for the 12th International Congress of Ethnobiology conducted by the International Society of Ethnobiology. There I joined with my colleague from Nature Kenya, Fleur Ng'weno, to co-chair a larger symposium on Ethnoornithology than I had presented the week before in Victoria, BC.
With the recent claims that the elusive Night Parrot has (again) been seen this 2010 summary of past sightings and Aboriginal knowledge of Australian ornithology's own 'holy grail' bird might help those struggling with the significance of those claims.
