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Changes and Cycles

Does it feel like the commute gets longer every day? Long commutes are a very real challenge to Carnaby’s black-cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus latirostris). In an increasingly fragmented environment, if the birds need to fly more than 12km from their nesting hollows to the heaths where their food plants grow, there’s not much energy left over for raising young.

This female has found a suitable nest site; to find out more about her chances of successfully rearing her youngsters, and how communities in Western Australia’s south west are rallying to help ... subscribe to Wildlife Australia.

By Saren Starbridge

A tribute to a man who believed that Australia needed a good wildlife magazine by Saren Starbridge.

When David Fleay, Kathleen McArthur and Judith Wright McKinney published a joint letter in Brisbane’s Courier Mail, on 24 July 1962, about the need for greater and better education about wildlife, Clouston was well-placed to respond. He offered to produce a magazine if they formed an organisation to back it.

The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (WPSQ) was established in September 1962; the first issue of Wildlife in Australia (soon changed to Wildlife Australia) rolled off the presses in June 1963.

Photographic story by Jeff Wright

A few of the world’s lakes are massive – the Caspian Sea, Lake Superior, Lake Baikal – but most are much smaller, making up an estimated 1 percent of our continental surface. Many lakes happen in the blink of a geological eye. They are, essentially, pools of water held in impervious basins formed in many ways: tectonic or volcanic action, erosion, meteor strike, an accumulation of organic material. Sediments flood or trickle in, affecting colour, chemistry, shape and size, and will eventually fill these ephemeral ecosystems.

Fraser Island and the Great Sandy Region are home to a particular suite of lakes, formed in porous sand dunes. More than 40 dune lakes occur here — more than half the world’s known total...

By Jill Morris

Paper or chambered, nautiluses are fascinating. The paper nautilus is actually a stage in an octopus life cycle – and there are a few more twists in this tale of two cephalopod books.

'My love affair with nautiluses began 25 years ago', says Jill 'with the collection of a 'paper nautilus shell' on Flinders Island in Bass Strait. Local folklore claims mass strandings of these delicate knobbly white ‘boats’ occur every seven years. Julian Finn, who was completing PhD studies in Argonauta nodosus (popularly known as the paper nautilus) when I met him, debunked that legend. Beachings of thousands of these delicate white 'boats' occur at any time after severe storms at sea...'

By Katrin Holmsten

Fishing rules in Karumba; that means learning about a lifestyle that's fresh, salty and includes a sex change.

Barramundi all hatch out as males, grow to maturity as males and breed at least once as males. At some time on their trip towards the salt water, when the males are about 90cm long and five to seven years old, they perform what is to us an astounding trick – they become female.

By Inger Vandyke

At the newly formed Aurukun Arts and Cultural Centre, Mavis Ngallametta is hanging strips of pandanus to dry on the centre’s fence.

Culturally, while other Cape York tribes paint, the Wik people tell their tales through sculpture and basketry. Young men learn to carve spirit poles, firesticks and firestick sheathes from beeswax, native timber and firestick beads in a converted tin shed on the township’s main street.

By Lorne Johnson

How does one choose the best Sydney bird watching locales? After close to 20 years of bird watching in Australia, I would apply the following criteria: it must have a rich diversity of species easily visible throughout the year; the bird habitat must be in as pristine a condition as possible – habitat with little or no encroachment by human development, efficiently managed by organizations with a green conscience and it must be easily accessible to conventional vehicles -not every birdwatcher or bird fancier has a four-wheel drive.

Mitchell Park, in the Hawkesbury region, comprises 115 hypnotic hectares of wet and dry sclerophyll woodland and paperbark swamps in riverside escarpment country, and on a dreamy mid-summer afternoon, a plethora of species can turn the park into a vibrant, almost mythical Babylonian garden.

• Birdwatching in Sydney
• Birds in Backyards
• The Living World of Molluscs

Editorial, City Animal, Trekabout Photography, Six Species - Gliders, NatureWatch, Books Reviews, Autumn Skies, Young and Wild, Scratchings and Rustlings, WPSQ in Action, Swamp Cartoon and our regular environmental crossword.

Subscribe to Wildlife Australia today - your subscription helps many worthwhile wildlife projects and contributes to a successful education campaign that has been an effective voice for Australian wildlife since 1963.