More book reviews

There have recently been a couple more reviews of my book Eagle Days including one in the Scotland on Sunday photographed below.

And another in the BBC Wildllife Magazine saying,

  'captures the experience of following a truly wild bird wonderfully, and plenty of other wildlife is seen in the pursuit. This stimulating book will make readers want to head for the Highlands themselves.' Derek Niemann.

All the reviews have been favorable and I find it interesting to see the different topics and aspects which the reviewers have caught onto and chosen to highlight. I deliberately wrote the book with a weaving text, integrating the life of eagles as much as they are themselves integrated with the Scottish Highlands and all they encompass. We all see things differently. If only we all cared for eagles.

Cover shot

The recent edition of the Australian Field Ornithologist has used one of my images for the cover shot. The bird featured is a White-faced Robin Tegellasia leucops, and together with another shot in the main text it illustrates a species whose display behaviour is described in an article by John Rawsthorne and Richard Donaghey. 

Double Pink feeding her chick

Double Pink is a very well marked bird, and those markings
 blend in so well with the woodland background

The colour-banded Tawny Frogmouth, Double-Pink, which was rescued and successfully released back to the wild by the RSPCA, and her partner have lost one chick. It probably fell from the nest - they are terrible fidgets those young frogmouths - and then scavenged by a Red Fox, which is a common feral predator in the Canberra area.

However, the good news is that they still have one chick, it is fit, healthy and almost ready to fledge. Click on the link below to watch her at the nest with her chick.

Double-Pink feeding her chick

A close call

The colour-banded Tawny Frogmouth has two chicks, not one as first thought when they hatched. It is always difficult to see just how many there are when they are small and covered by an adult. But now they are more than two weeks old, beginning to fidget and are ever inquisitive - peering over the edge of the nest to what is going on down below and all around.

Which is just as well, for while I was watching them today, there was a chorus of alarm calls, mostly from Noisy Miners, screeching nearer and nearer. When I looked around at what the frogmouths were watching I saw a Brown Goshawk flit through the trees, around the frogmouths' nest tree, and then gone. It was hot today, about 33 degrees, so the frogmouths had been sitting quietly with their bills open to catch a breeze and cool down. Then as the alarms went off, they clipped their bills shut, half closed their eyes, and gently eased into their broken-branch pose. Once the danger was passed they gently relaxed and opened their bills again. The adult never heeded me much, but the chicks seemed to think I was fascinating, staring at me continuously.

A Quiet Vegetarian

Shingleback eating flowers

While out in the woods today I came across this little guy, a shingleback lizard. I see these animals most days I am out in the local woods, but usually I just say hello and walk on by, leaving them in peace. They are such quiet, passive animals, and almost completely vegetarian.

I could see this one from way off as I walked along a dirt road. It was struggling to pull down the long stems of a feral weed, a crucifer of some sort, to get at the flowers. But as it has such short legs and toes it could barely bend the stems over. So I pulled a few flower stalks and presented them to it. The shingleback took them straight away, no fear. I carried on chatting to it and gathered a heap of flower heads. Soon it was  eating out of my hand, it's lips touching my fingers as I held the stalks so it could pull off all the rich protein-filled parts of the flowers. 

A marvelous experience, to be trusted like that.