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 »
While most people in Brisbane were battening down the hatches ahead of the arrival of Tropical Cyclone Alfred, others revelled in what was, for them, one of the most exciting natural events of their lives. Over the course of the weekend and into Monday, throngs of birdwatchers lined the shores of Bramble Bay in the
Twinnies care for sodden seabirds after Alfred 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
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For 100 years, the Night Parrot was the undisputed mystery bird of Australian ornithology. Until the discovery and subsequent study of a tiny population in Queensland’s far west in 2013, two specimens found by the side of remote outback roads in 1990 and 2006, also in Queensland, were the only hard evidence of its continued
In search of Australia’s newest mystery bird 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 »