by Paula Peeters | Feb 17, 2016 | Writing
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...
by Paula Peeters | Jan 26, 2016 | Forest portraits, Wildlife illustration
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...
by Paula Peeters | Jan 6, 2016 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration, Writing
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...
by Paula Peeters | Dec 24, 2015 | Tales of science
Earlier in the year, I brought you the story of Rowena and Herbie, the courting stone-curlews from Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary near Canberra. Their budding romance was mentioned in ‘Rewilding Weeloo, the enigmatic bush stone-curlew’. Well, as a...
by Paula Peeters | Dec 17, 2015 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration
I was sitting on a nearly-deserted Bribie Island beach last week, with only sand, sea, and bushland all around. An osprey was hunting nearby, and a few terns drifted past. The tide was up, and we’d just been for a dip – but only as far as a shallow sand spit,...
