Off Track

You might think you know the story of the lyrebird. Think again. And then listen to this ear-bending series called 'Sex, lyres and audiotape.'

There's some new nature-nerdery going on over on the ABC Science YouTube Channel and it features Off Track's Ann Jones. http://bit.ly/howdeadly

Are these the happiest hounds in Australia? We think so, and that's why we're playing this one from the Off Track archive.

Do you need a brain to be able to sense the world around you, or to remember or learn?

It's a very noisy world out in Australian nature, and sometimes all you need to do is stop and listen (to this).

Muttonbird Island in NSW is a place of majesty. It's just that the majesty crash lands in the moonlight and sounds like a squeezy toy.

The reserve at North Bungulla is quiet all day until the winds of the evening make the trees creak in the falling light. The winds bring the news that Barbara York Main has died.

All around us and within, water is an intimate, essential part of our lives. What would we do if water lost her way?

Listen to the audio book version of the Australian Children's book 'When Water Lost Her Way' by Meg Humphrys.

Does a second feel the same for a fly, a bird, or a swordfish, as it does for me? From the BBC World Service, immerse yourself in the world of animal senses.

A powerful avian predator is making do in Melbourne's suburbs. For now.

Professor Peter Waterhouse and the wonder plant Nicotiana benthamiana.

Angry sheep or randy frog? Motorbike or koala rev? Indigestion or monkey? Get the headphones out for another set of wild sounds sent in by Off Track listeners from around the globe.

The tiny Yarra pygmy perch, with golden sheen and teardrop eye, has been pushed to extinction in the Murray Darling Basin. Now, all hopes for its return are focussed on a couple of farm dams.

A bilby dreaming story guides a mother with a sick child to an outback town. Decades later, the child returns to repay the favour and look after the bilby.

Jack Absalom has died at the age of 91. From parrot poacher to painter, Absalom was a renaissance bushie with a story or two to tell.

It’s a momentous night for this teenage eastern quoll – she’s leaving home.

A crowd sourced audio zine that celebrates the world outside walls from the perspective of LGBQTIA+ people from all over the world.

Not quite tame, not quite wild.

It turns out, some forests love fire.

A team races against time and the elements to save 95-million-year-old dinosaur footprints in the Aussie outback.

Rats and mosquitoes threaten a fragile ecosystem on an isolated Tahitian atoll — but now scientists are trialling new techniques to rid the islands of destructive pests.

Obsessives, dumpy birds and disapproving academics: the saga of the night parrot.

How do you catch the shadow of a moon? You need a telescope with wings. Join the flight of a lifetime on SOFIA, the airborne observatory.

Spiders can be beautiful, timid, fluffy and even give up their lives for the sake of their children. [repeat]

Next to nothing was known about sperm whales in the Southern Ocean. That is, until the Australian Antarctic Division started listening to their clicks.[Repeat]

The wailing calls of the red-tailed black cockatoos that live in Australia's South East are being used to help change the future for the failing species.[Repeat]

With an aggressive mass-murder-then-compost strategy, these tiny plants are the most heinous of herbs.[Repeat]

These curious coral reef inhabitants have evolved some remarkable adaptations to thrive in the underwater realm. [Repeat]

In the lead up to Christmas, many Australians decorate their outdoor space AND bring a little bit of nature indoors. But many have not really considered why.

With a taste for the nectar of Australian flowers, the Western Pygmy Possum is the sweetest little thing you'll hear about today.

Tensions in the small town grow, and 'piss off pipi hunters' is written across a public toilet wall. And all the while, under the sand at the beach, a small clam opens up its gills and filters its phytoplankton dinner off the incoming tide.[Repeat]

Sounds from around Australia featuring the Peron’s Tree Frog, Cat Birds, Mystery birds and boobooks.

Off Track explores the Little Penguin (Eudyptula minor) colony on Bowen Island in NSW. [Repeat]

It was thought that cane toads couldn't survive, and certainly couldn't breed as far south as Sydney. That thought was spectacularly wrong. [repeat]

His business card says 'desert walker' and he's not afraid of death.

Native to North America, it was an extraordinary string of luck including a gold rush, cyclones, the rise of ornamental gardening that led to the naturalisation of the monarch butterfly in Australia.

The survival of one of the rarest butterflies in the world is entirely reliant on a ant.

Can you hear the buzz of a bee? The trill of a whistler? Spring has arrived in Australia, and this is what it sounds like.

After growing up in captivity, three young birds take their first free flight.

If Kevin McLeod did a series called Furry Mammal Grand Designs, the northern hopping mouse would have to be the star of the first episode.

It’s a bat eat mouse, lizard eat possum, wallaby eat bird world out there. Animals are always eating weird stuff.

The sounds of wild Australia recorded by the audience and identified by a panel of experts.

The water turns red and smells of fish. It's the blood of the prey of a pod of Orcas. This episode of Off Track has been selected from the archives for your listening pleasure.

In the 1920s, wearing ankle length skirts and carrying heavy packs, the Melbourne Women's Walking Club set out to explore dense areas of Victoria's bushland

Glenda Elliott has spent her life caring for injured, sick and orphaned Australian wildlife and then once rehabilitated, releasing them back into the wild.

Award winning radio Producer Mike Ladd takes a drive into the Mallee to discover its magic.

These curious coral reef inhabitants have evolved some remarkable adaptations to thrive in the underwater realm.

One small public notice stating the intention to mine Ellison Reef was the seed from which the 'Save the Barrier Reef' campaign was spawned. To celebrate the Reef Diver project, we've brought this episode up form the depths of the Off Track archives.

It is covered in flamboyantly coloured sausages, it’s a hermaphrodite, breathes through its skin, goes through metamorphoses AND this new species has just been officially named!