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How to draw a grassland, Part two: Ecology in pictures
Today's post gives you another sneak preview of the Riverina Grassland colouring book, and also describes the collaborative process I use to tell ecological stories through art. One of the things I love about my work are the discussions I have with collaborators about...
How to draw a grassland – Part One
Matt Cameron from the New South Wales Office of Environment has commissioned me to create a colouring book about the Riverina Grasslands, which are found in south central New South Wales and northern Victoria, and are home to many specialised plant and animal species....
Books: Bird Minds by Gisela Kaplan
If they were primates, we’d say they ‘had culture’ ‘were intelligent’ and ‘had complex cognitive abilities’. But as birds, these qualities are largely overlooked. And, what’s more, they are Australian birds. Australia, the arse-end of anywhere, that odd country of...
The ghosts of Oolambeyan
They look back at me, these opulent rams, their pale blunt faces and curling horns embedded in outrageous excesses of wool. Long dead now, once they were the pride of this place. Now they stare out of black and white photos, with faux-painted backgrounds,...
The Osprey
The osprey sees all. High above the town on a metal wire bowl, atop a mobile phone tower. From her crookedly pile of driftwood nest, she surveys the scene. A scattering of fibro shacks, low blocky brick apartment buildings, squat lowset brick houses, clustered near...
A fruitful partnership between trees and birds
Many rainforest trees begin their life in the beak of a wompoo fruit dove. And wompoos find it hard to survive without rainforest. This partnership is among the latest in a long series of trysts between rainforest trees and fruit-eating birds. A fruit and its seeds...
Books: Brilliant Green by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola
Imagine if the world was invaded by aliens who were of equal intelligence to us, but just did things incredibly faster. Thanks to vastly different technology and adaptations to those of humans, these aliens were able to move faster, reproduce faster, and communicate...
The scribbly gum woodland at Freshwater
Freshwater National Park smells burnt, but it looks lush green. I can hear the sleepy chortles of lorikeets, somewhere up in the bloodwoods. It’s late afternoon, on a hot January day. Maybe they’ve had too much sun, or too much nectar, or both. Scribbly gums rise like...
Sneaky snippers avoid a sticky end.
The other night, I met Mr Curly on my way to the Indian restaurant. He was hiding under a fig-leaf by the footpath, trying to look inconspicuous. But it was the shape of the figleaf that gave him away. Or what was left of it. You see, Mr Curly eats highly poisonous...
The rainforest in the gallery: Finding nature at the APT, Part one
Have you ever sat in a rainforest, in the dark heartland of a Pacific Island? Despite the vastness of ocean that is nearby, and all around, you are surrounded by the dense shady-cool dampness of ferns, palms, buttressed roots, swinging vines. Strange noises and...
Lullabies for life
A pair of fairy wrens are in our garden - their calls are shrill, sweet and curiously penetrating. And for the first time ever, I think they might stay. This is terribly exciting. When we moved here eight years ago, we transformed a backyard of kikuyu grass into a...
Books: Wild – An elemental journey
Wild: An elemental journey flees headlong into the jungles of the Amazon, before trekking to the stark whiteness of the Canadian Arctic, plunging into the ultramarine depths of the ocean, expanding out into the stillness of the Australian deserts, and then ascending...
Tales of Science
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Nature journaling
My first nature journaling workshop
I was a bit nervous early last Saturday morning. My first ever nature journaling workshop with a bunch of paying customers! I had previously trialed the format and exercises with a few of my more tolerant friends as guinea pigs. And they survived. They even liked it!...
Want to get started with nature journaling? This little guidebook will show you how.
Nature journaling is a relaxing and fun way to connect with the natural world. You don't need to be super-fit, or travel far to do it. Nature journaling improves your powers of observation and ability to see beauty and detail. It's useful for collecting wildlife...
An underwater nature journaling adventure
I love fish. Something about the way they stare and shimmer, and then quickly flick away from you when you’re snorkelling. The endless variety of shapes and sizes and forms. Their easy existence in a medium so foreign to ours. Well, it’s not really easy, there’s...
Nature journaling in the Noosa Botanic Gardens
This week I did a little nature journaling in the delightful Noosa Botanic Gardens, on the shores of Lake Macdonald, near Cooroy. For those of you who'd like to know more about nature journaling, I've started up a Facebook group called Nature Journaling Australia, so...
How to draw a grassland – Part One
Matt Cameron from the New South Wales Office of Environment has commissioned me to create a colouring book about the Riverina Grasslands, which are found in south central New South Wales and northern Victoria, and are home to many specialised plant and animal species....
Nature journaling on the Great Barrier Reef
Some years ago I had the great good fortune to visit Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef. I was tutoring a group of ecology students, and what with daily snorkeling trips, helping out in the kitchen, and assisting the students with their research projects, I didn't...
Forest portraits
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Cartoons
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Wildlife illustration
Why is the house gecko noisy while most lizards are silent?
A recent visitor to our house - a keen naturalist from southern Australia - was startled the first time he heard the sound of an Asian House gecko, and was even more surprised that a gecko was responsible for the call. It is unusual for a lizard to be so loud. I don’t...
Of bugs and booyongs
The rainforest holds many secrets in its high vaulted green ceilings, swooping loops of vines, a million soft mossy pockets and damp rotting piles of leaves. So many tales to tell. Of tree and leaf, beast and bug, season and storm. This one is about the black booyong,...
Swamphens in winter
Last winter Dowse Lagoon nearly dried up completely. The water- and swamp-plants died back, and green pick was hard to find. Every day, groups of purple swamphens would forage in the grassy parks nearby. The lawn grass around here is the sort with underground runners....
Little red nomads head north for the winter
Around Easter-time it starts. The stirring of retired folks - the ‘grey nomads’ - as they load up their 4WD’s and caravans and head north for the winter. In south-east Queensland you see them on the freeways, mostly up from the colder south. On their way,...
A yellow robin lights up the gloom
A yellow robin lights up the gloom of a forest at dusk. Sometimes, when I’ve been working quietly in a forest, I sense a presence nearby. A tickle on the back of the neck, or a flicker of something half-seen. And it’s this still little yellow bird. Perched...