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The toadfish, the toe-cutter, and the great swimming head
I once met a man who could hypnotize toadfish. He would stand ankle-deep, on the mudflats of Bramble Bay, with his heels together like Dorothy. And the little common toadfish would swim into the 'V' created, and become still. Not many people like toadfish, but...
Walk like a man: Was the giant kangaroo too big to hop?
Many years ago, Franz Kafka imagined a creature that was elusive, and remained tantalizingly out of reach, so that its exact nature was never quite discerned: The animal resembles a kangaroo, but not as to the face, which is flat almost like a human face, and small...
Egrets? I’ve had a few…
Over the last couple of months four species of egret have been frequenting Dowse Lagoon. Sometimes I see them together in the same muddy corner near the bird-hide. They are the great egret Ardea alba, plumed or intermediate egret Ardea plumifera, little egret...
The strangler fig: everyone’s favorite killer
A rainforest tree is subject to many mortal perils: shade, cyclones, fires, chainsaws. One of the most grotesque and extended deaths is carried in a tiny seed, rained down from above by complicit birds and bats. Many such seeds drop harmlessly to the forest floor, or...
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,...
Why is the ibis often grubby, and the egret always clean?
Lifestyle choices or better beauty products? The Australian white ibis often looks grubby, but the white plumage of egrets always looks freshly laundered - with a purity and glow that the makers of clothes detergents would die for. Both birds start out with white...
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...
Paperbark country
I live north of Brisbane, Australia, on the shores of Moreton Bay. This is paperbark country, or was. A place where blue gum woodlands once sank into grassy paperbark swamps which themselves interlocked fingers with muddy inlets flanked with mangroves. The...
Tales of Science
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Nature journaling
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Forest portraits
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Cartoons
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Wildlife illustration
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