In our recent spellbinding Raptorwatch series, where yours truly assumed an Attenborough-esque attitude toward revealing intimate details in the lives of local birds of prey, mention was made of the small but voracious Nankeen Kestrel. During winter, a bit like the protagonist in The Peregrine, I took to driving the dirt roads around Gillamatong in …
Well, yesterday was the last day of spring, not that you'd know it from the chill and damp days behind us. It's been less the force that through the green fuse drives the flower, and more the muted chesty cough of a secret TB sufferer. Thank you climate change, and thank you La Niña. Three …
All this reminiscing about weird ways to make a living has your author recalling a sure-fire narrative to spin during job interviews. It's a secret so powerful, using it will guarantee you a fast track to the C-suite in the global planet-destroying multinational corporation of your choice -- so use it wisely. And this is …
We interrupt this unstarted sequence of my oddball jobs to tell you about something a little closer to home. While the odd jobs may turn out to be an interesting bunch of stories which will be fun to resurrect, it has very little to do with embracing life in Braidwood, which is what this blog …
It may be that you have gained an impression from all this Braidwood-centric content that the raptor obsession is a new thing. You would be wrong! In fact, birds of prey have long fascinated me, and once or twice over the years have been the subject of my probing lens. Possibly the first time the …
Spring is in the process of springing: the magpies are engaging in aerial flirtations, the grey fantails are displaying, and today I snapped a new bird for my list, the tiny Spotted Pardalote, busily engaged in collecting nesting material. But with these hopeful signs, it seems the local raptors' habits are changing. This isn't based …
You may recall that the previous raptor post drew heavily on pious English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to relay the beauty and power of these birds. But there's enough to be said about mankind's fascination with raptors to fill a plethora of books -- the ancient sport of falconry, for a start, is one of …
It's winter now -- and following the freakishly wet summer we've just endured, we're experiencing some deep cold, such that Archie's water bowl freezes overnight and we keep the fire going all day. When it comes to local wildlife -- particularly the feathered kind -- I expected a bit of a dearth, with all the …
Idly musing as Archie and I wended our way down the Commonwood path the other day, I had a minor epiphany. That's a way of saying I realised something I hadn't realised before and felt a bit silly that it hadn't occurred to me earlier as it should have been obvious. This can happen when …
You know the outtakes phenomenon, where if you stick around long enough at the end of some movies (usually comedies), they show all the bloopers and ad-libs that wouldn’t make it to the final cut, but are funnier than the final cut? I like those. I remember going to the Rainbow Ascot cinema in Bulawayo …
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