Swinging wildly from confident to confused, and permanently dishevelled, this most relatable of cuckoos blunders through life as best it can * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast * See more Australian bird of the year content A sudden thud made me look up from my work. A stack of books sprawled across the floor. There were folders too, the contents fanned out like a deck of cards. In the middle, unperturbed by the mess it was creating, a pheasant coucal sauntered down the hallway. The bird was a feathered wrecking ball. In those days, I lived in a traditional Queenslander. The hall was once a veranda running the full length of the house. It had been enclosed with louvres to make a pleasant, airy office. I’d leave the door open to catch the breeze. To wildlife, an open door is an invitation. I’d been visited by a grey fantail, an entire family of pied butcherbirds and a brush-turkey, who had entered with uncharacteristic stealth and made off with a shoe. This was the first pheasant coucal. Continue reading...

Conservationists call for an end to native forest logging in NSW after the state’s forestry corporation is accused of logging breaches in Tallaganda State Forest.

Drone mapping software. Generate maps, point clouds, 3D models and DEMs from images, any orientation, any camera.

Changes of Note GDAL VSI Support @normanb added support for GDAL VSI in #4647. It is now possible to use VSI to control access to remote content. Any /vsi-prefixed file path will go through GDAL's...

Native Australian quolls and possums are thriving in the Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia after they were first reintroduced.

Until now, little was known about foraging flights of critically endangered southern bent-wing bats, which roost in caves * Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast A tiny, critically endangered bat – roughly the size of a matchbox – can fly about 150km in a single night, new research has found. Southern bent-wing bats roost in caves in south-west Victoria and south-east South Australia. They fly out at night in search of food, eating about half their body weight in insects. Continue reading...