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Ricki Coughlan

@rickicoughlan.bsky.social

2.1K followers 480 following 1K posts

Herbivore 🦕 Bird Observer 🦜 Rainforest Flaneur 🐍 Author 📗 Rational Humanist 👩🏻‍🔬 She/Her Birding tours and nature discovery walks in the Sydney region: http://aussiewild.com.au

aussiewild.com.au

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · Nov 15

Fabulous tour in Royal National Park today with bird photography enthusiast Prateek from Mombay. Among 58 species we got a gorgeous male Superb Lyrebird, stunning moments with Satin Bowerbirds and Green Catbirds and finished off with a gorgeous family of Powerful Owls! He wasn't disappointed.

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 15h

I'm fortunate enough to see and hear these birds several times a week. They're fascinating creatures and play important roles in the forest ecologies wherever they're found.

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 2d

Some compare this to Adam's legislative overreach, Johnson's racist Reconstruction failure and Woodrow Wilson's KKK style racism. This is vastly worse. It's systematic and Trump has project 2025, SCOTUS, the house and governors on board. He's rewriting all the rules. He'll never relinquish office.

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 2d

Ditto for "Modi's India".

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 2d

The genocide proponents think Israel should just walk away and it will all be tickety-boo: tens of thousands of murders, lives ruined, the maiming, surgeries with no anaesthetic, loss of eyes and limbs, orphans, loss of housing, destruction, starvation. No. Israel needs to justify its existence now.

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 2d

Just another plastic Barbie MAGA mouthpiece . . .

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 2d

I don't see truth or justice in this plan.

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 5d

"The purpose of freedom is to create it for others" - Nelson Mandela

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 5d

Even without Trump, you've nothing to go back to. You have to imagine a new nation, considering the foundational principles of a society which centres the equality of all humans, making equity and human dignity its north star. You have to share that vision, organise and then fight for it.

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

Nothing in the Epstein files will end his dictatorship. And what do you plan to go back to if it did?

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

Here, in the predawn along Bola Creek in Royal National Park, it would be at least half an hour before sunrise, so apologies for the grainy footage. However, I think the ambience is clear. I've had thousands of lyrebird encounters of the years, but each one is as exciting as the first! #birding

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

Sanction them and kick their embassy staff out.

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

And the textures . . .

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

This is an epic paper!

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

One can do a whole lot worse than spend some time in this truly magical part of the earth. I'm looking forward to heading there next year for more birding and nature adventures . . . end

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

Once we get out onto the flatter areas of the trail we're in Dusky Grasswren country, where the patient and observant will be well rewarded. It seems that every time I've visited (usually in March) there's been mass breeding events with hundreds of Grey-headed and Grey-fronted Honeyeaters . . . 3/

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

The dry riverbed of Ormiston Creek is decorated by gorgeous River Red Gums, these trees around surrounding vegetation are home to Red-browed and Striated Pardalotes, Rainbow Bee-eaters, Red-capped Robins and Slaty-backed and Chestnut-rumped Thornbills, to name a few . . . 2/

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

A 15 minute stroll over the spinifex covered hills from Ormiston Gorge brings one to this vista; looking west along the Larapinta Trail on the Macdonnell Ranges. Thereis some amazing birding to be had along this trail . . . 1/

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

A detailed and damning report by a respected team of clinicians and researchers. It confirms that the Cass Review was little more than a thinly veiled deceitful attack on the rights, humanity and dignity of transgender people in the UK. Shame on them and shame on UK politicians for falling for it.

Cal Horton (they/them) @fiercemum.bsky.social · 6d

An excellent new article outlining all that is wrong with the Cass Review, condemning its harmful impact on UK policy and practice, and calling it a failure of evidence-based medicine. Written by those involved in trans children's healthcare in Australia.

www.mja.com.au/journal/2025...

Cass Review does not guide care for trans young people

Good medicine is guided by the values of the patient, not those of a clinician, politician or commentator. The Cass Review, lacking expertise and compromised by implicit stigma and misinformation, doe...

www.mja.com.au

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Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 6d

It was a difficult decision, with many of my favourite birds on the starting ticket, but I've kicked things off with a sentimental favourite . . . Go Team Southern Emu-wren! 🥳 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

#birds #birding #birdoftheyear #birdoftheyear2025

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 7d

I'm still alive, so that's not true.

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 7d

😂

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 7d

The first thing I saw was the angry witch face . . .

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 7d

This is definitely important. In the past we used to have thousands of invertebrates around our streetlights at night. Now - none. I subscribe to the "cocktail of insults" theory and I wonder at times if things like radio waves in cellular networks might also be part of the issue.

Ricki Coughlan @rickicoughlan.bsky.social · 7d

This cheeky busy body came so close to me I had to put my camera down. I shook a few plants for him and he dashed over in the hope that I might dislodge and insect or two. When I held my hand out he hopped to within 2 or 3 centimetres hand. Certainly the friendliest Willie Wagtail I've ever met!

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