Tuesday 21 December 2010

Birdlife

This year has been fabulous for bird watching in the back yard. We have more welcome swallows than you can poke a stick at, dusky wood swallows, shrike-thrush, bowerbirds, blackbirds that mess up the mulch, thornbills, "yellow buts", red browed finches, king parrots, crimson and eastern rosellas, red cheeked wattlebirds, kookaburras, and 3 or 4 different honeyeaters. I've also seen a forest kingfisher or 2! I was delighted to discover that a pair of yellow faced honeyeaters has built a nest in a tree right by the house - here's one of them collecting nest material from our doormat. They seem quite fearless - particularly in the berry cage where I have to get to within about 1/2 metre of them before they will flit off to a safe distance (and another berry).
We also have a pair of wagtails nesting in the garden, and it's always entertaining to watch them "buzz" the magpies that come to be fed. They just keep on dive-bombing the poor thing until it retreats out of the territory.

Today however was the bonanza - the local pair of wedge-tailed eagles perched in the trees in the neighbour's paddock and I managed to get a couple of not very good pics using my digital camera through the binoculars. They flew overhead a few days ago and Lily and Freddie went nuts barking at them - I wonder why? They don't like the ravens either and will chase them across the yard.
Any good birds in your backyard lately?

2 comments:

Hazel said...

I rushed out with the camera yesterday to get a photo of the two wedgies casually circling over our valley, but they had circled over the ridge by the time I got out there. I blogged a couple of days ago about watching a Willy Wagtail building a nest on a branch hanging over our creek. I also have Eastern Spinebills, Yellow faced honey eaters, silvereyes, cockatoos, gang gangs (occasionally), kookaburras, blue wrens, king parrots, crimson rosellas...to name a few. I love the birds.

Margo said...

I love the eastern spinebills - they are so pretty. We also have white throated tree creeper that has a nest in one of our house's posts. I haven't seen any silver-eyes around this year though

thanks for stopping by!

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