Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

LightNews

Chris

@leftychris.bsky.social

900 followers 1K following 400 posts

Nature and politics fan-girl. 🦘 Pretty-much obsessed with the tawny frogmouths I share my backyard with. Voting yes was the least we could do, given everything, yet we couldn’t even fricken manage to do that. Privileged to be living in Meanjin, Australia.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · Nov 10

Honest to god, they’re the bloody best! Mr Tawny and the kids were the ones enjoying a bike ride today.😀

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 5h

Voting for the exquisite Southern Emu Wren, considered vulnerable in Qld, in the Guardian’s Bird of the Year comp. Think it needs my help more than tawnies which are currently coming first by a country mile, & are also doing much better numbers-wise in the real world.
share.google/vItUmBzJBbYf...

‘So tiny and so vulnerable’: what chance will one of Australia’s smallest birds have against a rocket launchpad?

When the federal government gave the go-ahead for a launch facility to be built at a site in South Australia that’s home to the endangered southern emu-wren, conservationists were astounded

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 8h

😂😂😂. Gen Z uni students clearly not stupid!
#auspol

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 13h

Roll call done for today.
#tawnyfrogmouth #birds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 15h

This bit of thinking by Kos Samaras makes a lot of sense to me.
Link to his original post here: www.facebook.com/share/p/1BLz...
#auspol

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 1d

Always relieved to find all three chicks still there in the morning, especially when they’ve been left to their own devices at times during the night while Mum and Dad are off hunting for their food. All you can see of the youngest is that little bit of fluff on the left 🤍
#tawnyfrogmouth #birds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 1d

Always relieved to find all three chicks still there in the morning, especially when they’ve been left to their own devices at times during the night while Mum and Dad are off hunting for their food. All you can see of the youngest is that little bit of fluff on the left 🤍
#tawnyfrogmouth #birds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 2d

People who destroy trees in order to get a view really piss me off. Trees ARE the view in my view.
#trees

Nobody hates trees more than coastally adjacent narcissists. Here’s how we should deal with them | First Dog on the Moon

A deterrent is one thing but I want revenge!

www.theguardian.com

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 4d

All three present and accounted for. Excellent!
#tawnyfrogmouth #ausbirds
#birds #spring

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 4d

💯. Revolutions - totally unAustralian 😄

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 4d

Oh I reckon they’re gloriously cute! #beauty #eye #beholder

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 4d

Great pic!!

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 4d

Nest must be getting pretty squeezy now! Baby on the left is still a little whitish fluffball though. Hoping the third one is still in there somewhere.
#tawnyfrogmouth #ausbirds #urbanbirds #spring

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 5d

Queenslander here, spending the day in Northern New South Wales. Looked at the time and said, ‘It’s 10am but feels like 9am.’ Suspect I’ll be repurposing BOM’s ‘Feels like’ measure a fair bit today. #daylightsavings

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 6d

Good article, especially the bit telling us that not bothering to clean our windows is good for biodiversity - just the excuse I needed.👌🏽😄
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Birds and cities don’t always mix well. But small changes in our behaviour can make a difference

Spring is a great time of year for noticing neighbourhood birds. Here are some simple ideas for helping the birds in Australian back yards, cities and towns

www.theguardian.com

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 6d

Haha!

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 6d

Barely discernible chick hiding in the Dad-cave.
#tawnyfrogmouth #ausbirds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 6d

Tawny Frogmouths. Yes, just lovely!

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 7d

All three chicks. 🩶🤍🩶
The one on the right is smaller and therefore younger than the other two. The one in the middle is the biggest, has more grey and less white, and is by far the most confident, and therefore probs the oldest.
Photos taken from far away, as last pic shows. #ausbirds #birds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 9d

The bush telegraph (noisy miners going nuts) alerted me to a lovely visitor to our backyard this morning. Sorry that the mickey birds were so rude to you, Kooky. #kookaburra #ausbirds #birds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 9d

Two of the three babies plus their doting dad.
#tawnyfrogmouth #ausbirds #birds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 10d

You could say it’s a tawny within a tawny. #tawnyfrogmouth #ausbirds #birds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 11d

Haha, brace yourself for the onslaught of pics over the coming weeks!

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 11d

Well hello there cute little tawny chick!
Dad looking understandably content in that last pic…

(Photos taken from a long way away on my back deck with max zoom)
#tawnyfrogmouth #ausbirds

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 12d

I ❤️ old urban gums - they are feisty survivors.
#eucalypts #trees

Chris @leftychris.bsky.social · 13d

Recommend you read Kos Samaras’s thoughts below about the recent wave of anti-immigration histrionics in Australia - a very interesting read.
#auspol #immigration

<
Kos Samaras v
2h • g
Status Lost, Blame Found: The psychology behind the Anti-Immigration.
The sudden rise in anti-immigration rhetoric after the federal election isn't a coincidence, it's a status reaction. Many conservatives had convinced themselves Australia was on the cusp of a US-style culture-war realignment. Instead, the electorate comprehensively ruled that out.
When a group, long accustomed to sitting at the apex of society, culturally, economically, demographically, feels that status slip, psychology kicks in. Status threat breeds grievance, and immigration becomes the easiest escape pod. It creates a clear "us versus them" line without confronting the uncomfortable truth: that the electorate itself has shifted.
There's also the matter of cognitive dissonance. To accept that your political world view is a minority, were also being wrong requires a reckoning........it's much easier to blame
"outsiders" for changing the country than to admit your world view is not mainstream Australia anymore.
And then comes dominance signalling. This one is really important because it's in my view the main driver. After a bruising defeat, loudly talking about bans, caps, and freezes is less about policy and more about theatre, an attempt to project control, to reassure their base that they still set the terms of debate. Have a think about the media and online coverage of conservative issues since May 3rd, you would think they actually won. Hence, it's politics as performance: if you can't win at the ballot box, you can at least perform on certain media platforms, and here on social media to convince yourself that you are still running the show.
But here's the reality check. Polling since May 3 suggests the Labor lead has held or even widened. By 2028, another 700,000 Gen Z voters will be enrolled. That cohort is more diverse, more progressive, and less interested in exclusionary politics than any before it.
What we're watching isn't strategy, it's the political equivalent…