Off Track - Abc Rn

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.