They have shaggy crests and bright scarlet cheeks. They bow, sway, stamp their feet and spread their wings in a Jesus Christ pose, justifying their status. They whistle and whoop. Males even use their enormous beaks to fashion tree branches into drumsticks, which they use to beat on tree hollows approaching the breeding season. They […]
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Søren Solkær was 10 when he witnessed his first starling murmuration, on the west coast of Denmark: more than 100,000 birds, making movies in the sky as they were being corralled by a falcon. It would be nearly 40 years before the photographer, best known for intimate, often playful portraits of artists and musicians, would
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An album consisting entirely of birdsong has debuted towards the top of Australia’s ARIA chart, beating Mariah Carey, Michael Buble and Abba to get to No. 5 one week after its release. Songs Of Disappearance, a collaboration between multimedia duo Bowerbird Collective and David Stewart, who has been recording the sounds of Australian birds for over four
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For the last several months, I’ve kept a slightly uneasy vigil on a pair of breeding Powerful Owls in inner Brisbane, just a couple of kilometres from home. In that time they’ve seen off crowds of curious onlookers, and a determined eviction attempt by Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, to raise one confident and healthy-looking chick, which will
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Nearly 20 years ago, in pursuit of a different sort of life, I spent six months commuting between Brisbane and Robbins Island, a remote chunk of privately owned land just off the far north-west coast of Tasmania. My job at the time was identifying and counting birds as part of an environmental impact assessment for
On Saturday morning I boarded a fishing boat on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast and, along with 15 or so others, chugged more than 40 nautical miles out to sea, where the Australian continental shelf drops off into deep water. But we weren’t out there for the fish: everyone was carrying binoculars and camera gear. We were
Birds find me in my happy place Read More »