I have been asked to paint a Flame Robin for a Christmas card for the National Trust of Australia. When I was younger, Flame Robins were a delightful decoration of every winter. As we rode our horses across the paddocks there would be parties of them, flitting ahead and perching on thistles or twigs until we caught up with them and moved them on again. Sometimes they would be my companions over long distances, as they dipped and looped along a fence-line that I was following, before flitting in a wide curve to land behind me.

Nowadays they are scarce. Their warmth in winter still gives a glow of pleasure each time they appear, but more often they are absent, leaving a cold and bleak landscape the poorer for their loss.

What has caused their disappearance? Is it due to changes in their habitat? Their old winter haunts were often native pastures with the natural insect production of a more ancestral ecosystem. Have changes in pasture or the use of pesticides had an effect? While not organic farmers, we dislike the use of pesticides, but landscape-wide use of them outweighs individual opinion.

Flame Robins withdraw to the high woodlands and scrubby forests to breed in spring. These habitats are changing faster than we admit. Constant controlled burning is opening the canopy, increasing weed invasion, drying out the bush and allowing denser, more highly flammable re-growth to take hold.  Perhaps this alteration of breeding habitat is the fundamental cause of the Flame Robins’ decline.

I miss our robins. Along with the fairy-wrens, they offer a unique splash of beauty to our surroundings while still being endearing, rather than gaudy. They represent species which have changed subtly in stature during my lifetime. Some groups have become much more numerous – White-faced Herons and Yellow-winged Honeyeaters spring to mind, alongside environmental thugs like Long-billed Corellas.  Others are disappearing as the inevitable pressure from increasing human population disrupts their habitat.

For the Christmas card I have attempted to minimize the distraction of the surroundings by using neutral colours and softening their focus as they recede. The flame red breast becomes the focus, the robin large in the picture and, as always, hunched but alert, looking to the ground for the next morsel.

We have just had a visit from old friends from America. Steve Is an Emeritus Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at a south-western university. I first met him and his wife Ruth in 1985 when I was in Phoenix for the 100th Anniversary Congress of the American Ornithologist’s Union. They have been good and generous friends ever since.

That year I joined them on a field trip to the Chiracahuahuas, a fascinating mountain area in the south of Arizona, where the habitat undergoes more than a dozen changes as it rises in altitude from the Sonoran desert to the alpine meadows at the summit. All of these habitats were foreign to my experience – desert cactus, oak forest, pine woodland and more. There could have been no better teachers than Steve and Ruth. Steve had been writing a book on the birds of Sonora, a north-western state in Mexico, for some twenty years. Each year he would make trips south to gather information, but in 1987 he made a journey with seventeen of the brightest young ornithologist in America in a bid to gather a great “blitz” of field data. I was privileged to be invited to join that group.

We ventured into some wild areas with great caution – Oviachic, Agiabampo, and San Rafael, on the edge of Barranca las Colos near Sahuarivo. Drugs were becoming a significant issue in the Sierra Madre Occidental – wild mountains of great beauty but greater seclusion. Six people had been murdered less than two months before our departure, hacked to death with machetes as they slept (no one knew why they had been attacked, as there were no survivors to tell), so we were careful to keep away from any routine behavior and to move camp by at least a mile each night.

Our first experience occurred before we had even left the capital of Sonora, Hermosillo, far behind! Travelling in our little van down a dirt track hedged on each side by tall maize plants, we were approaching a cross-track when a beaten –up old utility (“pick-up” in their language) with two extremely disreputable locals (one – bless him! – sporting the obligatory drooping Mexican moustache) came belting out of the side road, squealed to a halt in a cloud of dust and leapt out to stand either side of our van. Steve, our driver, was subdued by a sawn-off twelve gauge shotgun thrust into his face. I, navigating, had a .44 Colt revolver pointed into my right ear. Cocked.

Fortunately we had Arnie with us. Arnie Moorhouse was fluent in Spanish and explained to our attackers that I was from Australia – “Down Under” – and that everything was upside-down there. Indeed, so confused had I become that I even had the map the wrong way up and we were actually trying to go in the other direction. Gradually a broad grin invaded the scowls of our attackers as they understood that we had seen the folly of our ways and stepped back to allow us to turn round. Phew!!

Many of the impoverished farmers were growing marihuana crops in secluded barrancas to supplement their income. Carrying cameras or binoculars made us look “official”, so we were always under suspicion. The barrancas often enclosed important habitat. As much as 800 feet deep, they could be humid and wind-free, with a luxurience of understory that attracted many unusual species. As I was edging down a narrow track into a deep baranqe one day, a Mexican suddenly stepped from an alcove in the cliff face and stood barring the track, rifle askew and decorated with belts of ammunition around his chest. I looked him in the eye, smiled quietly, nodded to him and slowly turned around to retrace my tracks. Such perfect understanding between us!

In 2005, my wife Jenny and I joined Ruth and Steve for a visit to Mexico. I really wanted Jenny to experience the wild beauty of the mountains of the Sierra Madre and to see such glorious birds as the Elegant Trogon, or the mad antics of the Military Macaw in that glorious, expansive landscape.

By then the danger had escalated. The mountains were controlled by drug barons, so that attacks for robbery had become frequent. These drug barons are competitive and ruthless. They are not afraid to murder for profit, so many areas that were once excellent places to find birds have become far too dangerous to visit.

Steve and Ruth guided us safely to some wonderful places, with never a whiff of cordite and never a drop of blood! These included some of the safer coastal areas round San Carlos, (Sierra del Steldado and Nacopuli Canyon), but closer to Alomos we spent time at Arroyo Aduana and Rio Cuchujaqui before returning to Tucson via Yecora.

And now Steve and Ruth are staying with us in Australia. Remembering the fun we had in Mexico I have painted a little picture recalling some of the birds that marked our journey. There are so many left out, from Blue-throated Hummingbirds to Rufous-bellied Chachalaca and Cinnamon Squirrel Cuckoo, but the ones included are all special memories from special places painted with much gratitude for a great trip.

The Groove-billed Ani at top left was one of a group of five that we found on the outskirts of Alomos. Elegant Trogons were always a highlight, wherever we saw them. Other birds include Streak-backed Oriole, Yellow Grosbeak, Lesser Goldfinch, Cactus Wren (bottom left) and the Canyon Wren, A Mexican Blue Magpie, a Ladder-backed Woodpecker and Green Kingfisher, Crested Caracara and Turkey Vulture, these last three depicted as we saw them at Rio Cuchujaqui.

Of course, Steve is in the middle of the painting, for Mexico has been his country for nearly fifty years.

Looking through sketches from my time in Antarctica today I realize how quickly time has slipped  by since I was there.  It was an inspirational place and I have produced a lot of paintings and drawings from that trip that are hanging all over the world.
The extraordinary light is the challenge and I have been developing new ideas with icebergs to try to catch that feeling.
Now I have been asked to look at the landscape at several of the old stations that have been partially rebuilt since I was there.  I have great ideas for paintings of Casey and Davis stations, but although I spent more time at Mawson, its industrial feel is less appealing.  Also the savage beauty of the abandoned station at Wilkes has a weird fascination.  There are some wonderful shapes and colour balances at Wilkes.
There are so many opportunities:  not just the bright, low light, but the strength of the light even in dull conditions.  Also the birds – everything from strength to fragility, but always with a sense of freedom.

The chill of winter has arrived, suddenly the mice venture indoors.  There are plagues of mice on arable country this year and, living on a farm as I do, there are some that wish to share the warmth and security of my home.
I like mice. This affection is not always shared by wives or mothers.
I painted a number of “mice pictures” for my first one-man exhibition in London and, when interviewed by the Daily Telegraph, explained the source of my sketches.  When I was a kid, there was nearly always a mouse or two living in the closet in my bedroom.  I used to love watching them as they pottered about, and they were the source of most of my sketches.
My mother was terribly disappointed.  Her pride in my exhibiting in London was totally dashed by the knowledge that every reader of the London Telegraph knew that she had mice in her house!  She could never understand that I considered that a point in her favour, not a matter of shame.

As winter closes in that familiar feeling returns.  I need to get back to red dirt country again.  I have spent so much time camping in the red centre on field trips or environmental surveys and this is the only way to see it for me.  The sense of heat when the midday sun is beating down is memorable, but it is the early morning, particularly, and the late evening which bring the country alive.  The colours are subtle then and the shadows long, producing the contrasts that make it so enthralling and revealing the animals going about their business before the heat drives them back under cover.

Bushfires have influenced much of my lifetime.  I was involved in volunteer preparation – burning firebreaks etc. – from my early teens.   I first attended a major fire in 1977, and then again as massive new fires occurred in 1983, 2003, 2006, 2009.
The sad thing is that, despite all the fear and the misery and the destruction, bushfires are amazingly beautiful.  This is less obvious if they are at your own back doorstep.
I find it difficult to separate all the conflicting emotions relating to fires.  I hate the over-burning of our environment to prevent fire, as it not only does huge environmental damage, but dries the country and increases fire-risk.
My Grampians studio is on the fringes of both wildfire damage and controlled-burn areas.  I am getting to the point where I need to put down some ideas I have sketched in the 2003 and 2006 fires relating to the recovery.   I returned to a section of familiar country that I saw burn in a catastrophic crown fire in 2003 just three months later and found it under snow.  The subtle contrasts between the scorched leaves and the new growth were stunning;   but It was the stillness that was over-whelming, with the contrast of the black tree’s skeletons and the soft snow behind.
There is so much to separate from the whirling vortex of images in my mind.