The population of this beautiful mid-sized forest-dweller, Fischer’s Turaco (Tauraco fischeri) is of near to threatened status and is found in coastal and riverine forest and woodlands in Kenya, north-eastern Tanzania and southern Somalia along the east African coast. […]
In recent years Ethnoornithology has emerged as a valuable sub-discipline of ethnobiological research, partly for its potential to be able to make a valuable contribution to bird conservation and also as a means of empowering people of all cultures preserve, re-examine and discover the connections between individuals, groups and cultures and the birds that people hunt, venerate and cherish.
Last Friday I packed up the Troopie and headed north-west for a few hours to a gorge that I've camped at a few times in the past. At this time of year there are quite a few waterholes scattered throughout the ranges that this gorge cuts through. Right now the waterhole near the mouth of the gorge is full and fresh, later in the year the waterhole will be the last "free" water in the area.
We get into incredibly remote and exciting places like the Torres Strait - very few people have been to a place where they can look across to New Guinea while standing in Australia. So they are bonuses but doing the research and making new discoveries, and learning new things about natural history and ornithology and management - all sorts of things...
As usual, the locals have the last laugh - and the best eyes for a bird. Just before I left Saibai I had a yarn with Saul Aniba about this most beautiful bird. He told me that he had seen one a few months before - also dead - not far from where we found this latest specimen.
The chopper pilot and I were coming in at 2,000 feet off the mountain. We came right up behind a Wedgetailed Eagle (Aquila audax) and the chopper pilot said "Look at this – I’ve never seen this in my life!" We were no more than 60 feet behind him and this magnificent Wedge-tailed Eagle was turning his head to check us out in the chopper behind him. An unbelievable and absolutely memorable experience that will stay with me forever.
"All travellers know that native accounts of the habits of animals, however strange they may seem, almost invariably turn out to be correct."
While it is easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that thousands of birds are kept in appalling conditions purely for human exploitation, profit and enjoyment, it is important to note that, as with most of the relationships between people and birds, things are a bit more complex than that.
Like many other aspects of life in Aboriginal communities the dogs there are far more visible in Aboriginal communities where there are few fences and the dogs can all be seen in public, whereas in the suburbs of Palmerston and Darwin the dogs are all behind fences and locked inside houses and you just don’t see them.
I long ago gave up going to conferences where I'm not presenting a paper and my presentation was in the first session of the first day...
