It is now Spring and we have had wonderful seasonal conditions - warm weather and some heavy rainfall - so that everything is looking lush and green. and, currently, we have a procession of lovely birds through the garden attracted by the flowering native shrubs and Emily's five-star bird-feeder hanging from a tree. We keep this topped up with large volumes of mixed seed suitable for just about all sizes of birds.
The flowering shrubs, including lovely bottle brushes (look that up on Google), attract the 'Varied' and White-eared' Honey-eater and, yesterday, we even saw an army of green plumed finches also dining on the nectar. The bird feeder attracts a procession of parrots: King Parrots, Grass Parrots, Galahs, Sulfur Crested Cockatoos, Crimson Rosellas and Eastern Rosellas - all with bright plumage. The males out-perform the females in that regard. In addition, we find finches, silver-eyes and the common sparrow frequenting the feeder, together with the odd crested pigeon. In fact, the garden also hosted some starlings yesterday, somewhat to our surprise since starlings are rare for much of the year. On top of all these we know that some laughing Kookaburras (a member of the Kingfisher family) live around us, along with the omni-present Magpie.
The Magpie lives just about everywhere in Australia and has better adapted to humans than just about any bird. They are large, very tuneful, and - in the nesting season which has just ended - highly aggressive. They look similar to the Pied Currawongs, but are in reality a quite different species. The Currawongs are much more secretive and wary of humans.
So we have a large number of friends in all shapes and sizes. Apart from these we sight lots of other birds from time to time, including ducks, wading birds, plovers, eagles, and so on.
Alas, I have to report that we had a sick bird in our garden a few days ago. It was a beautiful female King Parrot - a large bird. I saw it looking sorry for itself on a branch outside of my study window. Several hours later it was on the ground feeding from fallen seed below the feeder and it seemed unable to fly. That was a worry as our cat, Honey, was stalking it. So I caught the bird by throwing a blanket over it. Dot and I put it in a cardboard box along with a dish of bird seed and called an organisation called Wires, which looks after injured wild-life. By this time it was dark and the Wires staffer turned up early the next morning to collect the bird for treatment. The next day, we heard that the King Parrot had sadly passed away.
AS
3 comments:
Last year we rescued a hedgehog from the garden suffering from exposure in the sun, or a very ill one anyway. So we put it in a cardboard box with newspaper and the neighbour took it to a friend who looks after hedgehogs and it was fine and released in a field.
Thanks, Laura. We enjoy helping wildlife and your comment reminded me that we rescued an Echidna a few years back. Echidnas resemble hedgehogs, but are unrelated. Look them up on the web.
AS
I looked Euchidnas up on the web. Thanks for the tip. I have a picture of one on a journal and a little soft toy that Bec very kindly sent me. Hope you are both well.
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