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Calyptura cristata
Aim: I was struck by the descriptive language used to describe both the bird and the lack of knowledge about the species. For example, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, this paragraph: The Kinglet Calyptura is among the most enigmatic and poorly understood species of Neotropical birds. A bizarre bird, it resembles a kinglet (Regulus) […]
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TR Taronga Zoo field report #1
This report covers visits taken place on January 7 (with Zoe), February 3 (with Zoe), April 2 (on my own), and April 22 (with Zoe), 2021. I also visited Taronga Zoo on May 15, but being with family I did not visit the regent honeyeaters. This report is an attempt to respond to the first […]
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Birds of Mallacoota by Nick Ritar
Following the New Year’s Eve bushfire that forced most of Mallacoota’s residents on its beach, Nick Ritar of Milkwood, a permaculture smallholding, documented some of the avian victims on January 2, 2020. The images are posted here with Nick’s permission. Thank you, Nick, for documenting this event so that we can all bear witness. Nick’s […]
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Pentti Linkola
Pentti Linkola is something of a conscience for Finland and for humanity. His ideas are radical, often shocking and sometimes dangerous. Yet I’ve shared some of his thoughts in moments, as a visceral reaction to the persistent destruction of the biosphere that I have witnessed, and contributed to, throughout my life. While a lot of […]
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Braiding Sweetgrass
“Weep! Weep! calls a toad from the water’s edge. And I do. If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.” A friend and colleague recommended Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass a few months ago. […]
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Storytelling for the uncanny present
While overseas in November, I caught snippets of news from home: unprecedented bushfire smoke choking major cities; koala populations declared functionally extinct (not all koalas); heritage-listed rainforests burning; farmers traumatised by the screams of dying animals. From afar, these unsettling accounts seem fictional, like the ‘raining frogs’ in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Except in Anderson’s […]
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Remembering buntings, forgetting buntings
The Ortolan Bunting and Yellow-breasted Bunting were plentiful during the first decade of my childhood. (I was born in 1975.) The latter was never common in Finland; the country was on the edge of its distribution, but it was an abundant birds throughout its range across northern Eurasia. Well, no more. Yellow-breasted Buntings are no […]
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Arts Letters and Numbers residency
How many PhDs does it take to set up a blog? In ‘the plant room’, Timo and I flick jalapeno chip dust off ourselves, smug that we have finally figured out how to insert this blog into the site, on day 3 of a 5-day residency at Arts Letters and Numbers, Averill Park, NY. Although […]
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HumanNature podcasts
On day three of the Arts Letters and Numbers residency, we listened to podcasts from the Australian Museum’s ‘HumanNature: Connection and cooperation in a time of climate change’ series, (accessed through AM soundcloud account). I decided not to say much about the heartbreaking things that are taking place on Earth today. We’re in the midst […]
PRECARIOUS BIRDS 