Brush-tailed bettongs released into Mount Gibson sanctuary
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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Is Australia a conspiracy theory nation?
You can subscribe for free to Guardian Australia's daily news podcast Full Story on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Read more:
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
We once loved pigeons. We might not remember that, but they do
A month or so ago, my partner and I went on a painfully short trip to northern Tasmania. Tucked away in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, we lit fires, watched sunlight dip over the mountains; and, as avid birdwatchers, saw an abundance of avian life, nestled in the trees, awash with golden light. So at first, returning to our home in Sydney, where we live in a flat on a major street, triangulated between three different vape shops, my overwhelming feeling was one of despair. Gone were the rolling hills, replaced by convenience stores selling AI-generated posters of monkeys smoking cigars. Suddenly, everything I observed about city life became evidence for a growing theory that the human race had gone terribly, unavoidably wrong. Around this time, I stepped out on to the street and noticed a pigeon, nestled in the roof above my door. The green of the plumage around her neck glinted, a mossy river struck by a plume of light. She cooed, gently, and her partner fluttered up beside her, his beak filled with twigs, come to help build their nest, together. If there is anything that defines modern life, it is how determinedly and constantly we are trained to not really see. We wake up and get to work ignoring things, like we're being paid to do so. Human brains are naturally predisposed to ignoring the familiar, and focusing on the new, the different, the outrageous. Anything we're surrounded by for too long grows invisible. The humble pigeon is that ethos poured into a feathery, fragile little body. Pigeons are noticed only when they seem particularly foul, paid mind only when they annoy us. They are also victim of rampant animal welfare crimes: pelted with rocks, chased from dwellings, killed and maimed en mass. Which is ironic, because, as it goes with so many problems we face, pigeons are a 'problem' that we have caused. Feral pigeons are descendants of homing pigeons that we kept and domesticated. We loved them, once. We might not remember that, but pigeons do. They are naturally predisposed to want to be close to us. They gather where we gather. They thrive as a result of the particular way we have decided to live, rooting through our trash, taking shelter in our nests. And if pigeons are dirty or disgusting, they are that way because we are dirty and disgusting. Forgive me for excessive anthropomorphism, but we live in a natural world that, rightfully, flinches from human touch. Pigeons are one of the few creatures that don't. And for that, we punish them. But if this makes it sound like my burgeoning fascination with pigeons is guided by self-hatred, more despair, excessive fury at the way humans have decided to live, then I have mis-communicated. After noticing the nesting pigeons above my door, I began to actively look for them, everywhere. A few days later, walking home from work, I saw a flock of them huddled together, eating a discarded loaf of bread. Their overlapping cooing sounded like the movement of water. It was no northern Tasmania, but it was something. A pigeon deep-dive on Wikipedia that day brought me to an article, published in 1995, which informed me that pigeons are able to differentiate between paintings by Monet and Picasso. And I was moved not only by the image of a little bird, wandering between impressionist and cubist masterpieces, but the gentle, beautiful curiosity of humans too: that we can be interested enough in pigeons to want to know what they think about the art that we make. Another thing about human brains: we adore a binary. Human versus non-human. Nature versus the city. Regular versus exceptional. Just because we see something every day – just because it surrounds us – it doesn't mean that it's any less remarkable for that. So often, we picture metropolises as places devoid of wildlife; even in our despair, we end up drawing arbitrary lines between us and the natural world. Humans are not alone. Somehow, even after all that we have done, we still have pigeons by our side, building their nests, quietly, heads down, as we build ours. Joseph Earp is a critic, painter and novelist. His latest book is Painting Portraits of Everyone I've Ever Dated
BBC News
5 hours ago
- BBC News
Rewilding charity seeks views on reintroducing storks to London
The image of a stork carrying a baby in a bundle dangling from its beak, on its way to deliver the child to its new parents, is as old as the birds and the the long-legged birds largely disappeared from the skies above London centuries ago due to hunting and habitat loss - though babies continued to be born in the capital despite their absence. Now a conservation charity is asking Londoners for their views on the potential return of white storks to the birds are known to thrive in urban settings on the continent, and urban rewilding organisation Citizen Zoo is conducting an appraisal on making London a "white stork-friendly city". Citizen Zoo said it is reaching out to boroughs across the capital to gauge their response and surveying the public about the 2016, a white stork project in Sussex has sought to create new colonies of rehabilitated injured storks, with the first successful breeding in the four decades before the start of that project there were just 27 records of white storks across Greater between 2016 and 2023 there have been 472 sightings in the capital, with the numbers increasing year-on-year, conservationists Newton, co-founder and director of rewilding at Citizen Zoo, said white storks are a "talismanic, iconic species that really do draw and attract attention".He added: "You look up into the skies and see a white stork, it's quite obvious."And if you look across European landscapes, this is a bird that can actually thrive in urban landscapes, on chimneys, on pylons, and are associated with thriving in urban settings."What we want to see is how can we make London a more white stork-friendly environment, and embrace it for its ability to inspire people about the nature we can and should have close to where we live." Mr Newton said it is "completely within our will as a species to choose the environments that we build around us and we can make that conscious choice to integrate more nature into our cities, and that will bring a whole wealth of benefits."The survey of Londoners is being led by the University of Brighton, with two phases that mirror a national survey conducted as part of the white stork project in national survey found overall people were very positive towards the species, even if they had never seen storks before, although there was a lack of knowledge about things such as the stork's diet, and even what they looked a "relatively small" number of people - often those who were ecologists, conservationists or birders - were not in favour of the reintroduction, largely because it was not a threatened species and they thought it should not be a priority for first phase of the London study has involved surveying a representative sample of 1,000 Londoners, and a second phase is asking residents and frequent visitors to give their view on white storks and their place in the Newton added that "nature has a fantastic tendency to surprise us" and it is possible storks could establish themselves in London again without human to European folklore, a white stork is responsible for bringing babies to new parents. The tale was popularised by a Hans Christian Andersen story from 1839 called The Storks.
