by Paula Peeters | Jan 6, 2016 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration, Writing
A pair of fairy wrens are in our garden – their calls are shrill, sweet and curiously penetrating. And for the first time ever, I think they might stay. This is terribly exciting. When we moved here eight years ago, we transformed a backyard of kikuyu grass into...
by Paula Peeters | Dec 24, 2015 | Tales of science
Earlier in the year, I brought you the story of Rowena and Herbie, the courting stone-curlews from Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary near Canberra. Their budding romance was mentioned in ‘Rewilding Weeloo, the enigmatic bush stone-curlew’. Well, as a...
by Paula Peeters | Dec 17, 2015 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration
I was sitting on a nearly-deserted Bribie Island beach last week, with only sand, sea, and bushland all around. An osprey was hunting nearby, and a few terns drifted past. The tide was up, and we’d just been for a dip – but only as far as a shallow sand spit,...
by Paula Peeters | Nov 19, 2015 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration
Every summer, in our street, there was a loud insistent “pip-pip-pip” that rang out, at intervals, nearly all day. The Sacred Kingfishers were nesting in a large old tree near the corner. The tree is gone now, and I need to walk further to be within earshot of the...
by Paula Peeters | Oct 3, 2015 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration, Writing
Cold wind buffets my breath as the small boat bounces along the waves. We are heading towards a tiny, sun-bleached rocky nub of an island, one of the many that cluster about the sprawling, inverted triangle of Eyre Peninsula, like small fish shadowing a large,...
by Paula Peeters | Aug 27, 2015 | Tales of science, Wildlife illustration
This is Fleay’s barred frog, one of several species of large frog in the genus Mixophyes that occur in or near streams associated with Australian wet forests. Now when you look at a frog, you might think that it’s a short-lived, rather ephemeral...
