Momentum is building for a national ban on a popular yabby trap which drowns any air-breathing animal that can fit inside it, including the vulnerable Platypus. So-called opera house traps are a collapsible net with a funnel-shaped entry on each side. Neil Andison, who works as a Platypus tour guide in Maleny on the Sunshine […]
Push to ban platypus “death trap” Read More »
In March, as Cyclone Alfred roared towards the south-east Queensland coast, the bayside suburbs of Brisbane were treated to a rare cold-water visitor. A Shy Albatross was spotted offshore, opposite a fishmonger in Sandgate. A couple of days later, what was likely to be the same bird flopped into a front yard of nearby Banyo, exhausted.
Bird of the year 2025: Vote 1 Shy Albatross Read More »
It had been three months without a peep, and the ecologist Matt Herring thought Gloria had perished. He had captured the elusive bird on 22 October 2023, on a property north of Balranald in New South Wales – the first Australian Painted-snipe to be fitted with a satellite tracker. But contact had been lost, and there
Tracking the Australian Painted-snipe Read More »
From GJ Walter Park, just north of Toondah Harbour on the shores of Moreton Bay, Judith Hoyle gazes across the dappled water towards Cassim Island, a resilient stand of mangroves emerging from the mudflats several hundred metres offshore. Ferries from Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) cruise past, barely causing a ripple. From a spit of mud
The high-risk life of the Bar-tailed Godwit Read More »
The Pink Cockatoo has had a few names over the years. The father of Australian ornithology, John Gould, knew it as Leadbeater’s cockatoo, following the scientific name given to it in 1831, Cacatua leadbeateri. This was after Benjamin Leadbeater, the London naturalist and taxidermist. Sir Thomas Mitchell, the surveyor general of New South Wales from 1828 to
The savage colonial history of bird names Read More »
A range of amphibious grunts, clicks, squeals and screams from more than 60 species of Australian frogs has landed at No. 3 on the ARIA album charts – with hopes of knocking off Paul Kelly and Taylor Swift to take the top spot. Brought together by the Bowerbird Collective (musicians Anthony Albrecht and Simone Slattery)
Frog-hopping up the charts Read More »