“However, with the increase in higher density housing, smaller lots of land and larger homes the traditional Australian backyard is disappearing with fewer trees and shrubs being available for birds and other small animals.”

Gould is urging people to think of birds by making sure that they leave a bowl of water in the garden in a safe spot off the ground for birds to get a drink. Ms Colborne said, with the lack of rainfall and excessive temperatures forecast to continue bird life in Australia will continue its migration to the city areas.

The appreciation of Australia’s bird life has never been more important as many of our birds are facing extinction and unfortunately in the past one hundred years we have already lost many species. Teaching children to appreciate bird life in their own gardens is part of developing a life long environmental skill and understanding that is vital given the impact of climate change on the next generation. Australia is home to between 600,000 and 700,000 species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. About 84% of plants, 83% of mammals, and 45% of birds are endemic – that is, they are only found in Australia.”

The Department of Environment and Water list twenty three birds as extinct, and another forty which are endangered.

Ms Colborne said that with climate change, tree clearing, the removal of habitat in the cities with denser development and the drought, birds and other unique Australian fauna are under increasing threat.

Gould’s Top Tips for Bird Watching

What scares birds?
Three things will frighten birds unnecessarily.
* Pointing with an outstretched arm will often frighten birds close-by.
* Sudden movement eg. a child swinging a bat, throwing a ball or play fighting will frighten birds because they see fast dangerous looking movement.
* Sudden loud sounds unsettle birds, but talking in an even pitched tone will cause little disturbance.

Locating birds:
To find birds, look for movement and locate where sound is coming from. The brightest parrot is invisible in a green tree when it remains motionless. Look for movement in the air, on the ground and among plants. You may also find some birds resting on structures like power lines, roofs etc. Look in the direction of bird calls. Remember not to point with an outstretched arm.

How close can you get?
Most birds will allow you to get reasonably close before they fly away or run off. You can get closer by moving slowly, approaching from the side and not walking directly towards the bird. How close you get may depend on the environment. So parks and your own garden, where birds are used to people are good places to begin bird watching. During duck shooting season, waterbirds may be nervous, and may not let you get within 200 metres of them. But in a park, the same duck may come up and take food from you.

Feeding Birds:
The best way to feed birds is to provide them with appropriate trees, shrubs, grasses and mulch. Many birds appreciate a shallow bird bath. Directly feeding feral birds can potentially cause problems for the survival of some of our native birds.

What do birds do?
There are many interesting books describing the intriguing life of birds. You may like to read some of these books. However you can look through a window into your garden, or go outside and discover first hand the amazing life of birds.

The adult birds are more attractive though with a vivid blue patch around the eye instead of the yellowish-green shown here in this younger bird. The juveniles also have dark brown head feathers rather than black.

Here he is with the pair of noisy miners and it was raining all day today so the birds look rather wet and fluffed up.  Seeing these two species of birds together reveals that they show some similarities around the beak shape and eye area.

I always know when the blue-faced honeyeaters (Entomyzon cyanotis) are around because of their rather shrill call which is a kind of loud yoik and they are quite lively and aggressive around other birds.  They don’t stay still for long and even in these shots there is movement.  Everything about them, in my experience, is quick, restless and aggressive movement – not shy and retiring at all!

As I don’t yet have a decent photograph of an adult bird, I have borrowed an image to show you how attractive the adult birds are with the gorgeous blue colouring around their eyes.

Picture courtesy of: Middle Tennessee Cage Bird Club

Here is some info on this unique plant from Gardening Central

The bat plant plant looks remarkably like the face of a bat. It even has whiskers and a tail. The bat plant is considered to be an exotic plant and will grow the best in warm, subtropical or tropical temperatures. It is usually grown as a house plant but could be grown outside in locations that are always warm. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t flower for quite a long time as it generally takes up to three years to produce its first flower, and several more years before it is a large, fully blooming plant. The end product, however, is more than worth the wait.

It has many, many flowers which form the head of the bat–these can be very dark purplish or truly black. The top of the flowers are covered with leaves, which are black.  The plant grows to be around three feet in height. The whiskers grow out of the flower base and hang down the sides. They can be as much as twelve inches long. The bat plant is very difficult to grow and is not a plant that is good for beginning gardeners. Even under tropical temperatures, the flowers are hard to bloom.

The bat flowers and leaves are a little eerie because they really do look like a bat. It is a plant that is bound to get an enormous amount of attention when it is in bloom. Everyone who visits will want to know where you got it and probably want to grow one of their own. The bat plant is hard to find but well worth the effort if you live in a warm climate.

Lycid Beetle

Sparkling dew drop

Dome-backed Spiny ant

Sometimes the rainbow lorikeets are missing in the garden but in these conditions many come down and squabble over the seed bell.  Their acrobatic antics amused me today and one lorikeet in particular was dangling comically in the lillypilly tree, waiting for a chance to nibble on some seed.

The acrobatic antics of the rainbow lorikeets

These pretty, hanging clusters of pinkish purple flowers are in bloom on a hedging plant we put in several years ago called Duranta erecta ‘Sheena’s Gold’.  It has lovely yellowish, green leaves and makes for the ideal hedge or screen.  I often find lady beetles, flower and lynx spiders in this hedge.

This of course then sends the cuckoo off after them and the photo I long for is gone, deep sigh.  I have included a photo of one of the crows perched at the top of our lillypilly tree who was scanning for food and a distant shot of the juvenile cuckoo which is the only photo I have actually managed to take so far.

One of the Torresian crows who has become a surrogate parent of the Channel-billed cuckoo

Here he is looking up at one of the crows, a couple of branches higher up. When I took this photo, he was constantly flapping his wings and screeching.  This must be annoying every single neighbour in the street as this odd family of birds flit about from three different high trees, distantly surrounding our yard!

It’s an attractive, tall tree in our garden belonging to the family Myrtaceae.  I tend to ignore its presence until I spot the blossom and whitish-mauve fruit but I’ve never actually photographed it before for some reason until now.  The lorikeets and butcher birds take shelter in it from the hot midday sun.

Fruits are succulent or fleshy and usually contain one seed.  They are edible but sour  tasting.

The fruit has  a small, round cavity at the top which encloses a single large seed and can be used to flavour jams and jellies, for skin products and making wine.  I discovered a recipe for  lillypilly wine here by Tom Worthington.  A wide range of birds enjoy feasting on the fruit.  The berry has a tart, cranberry-like flavor, that has a hint of cloves. It has been popular as a gourmet bushfood since the early 1980’s, and is commercially cultivated on a small-scale basis.

The lillypilly has fragrant white flowers in late spring, and these flowers are followed by fruits.  The flowers form in clusters and this particular species is waterhousea floribunda

Anthers are the pollen-bearing swellings on the ends of stamens, the filament-like structures which give the flowers their characteristic pincushion appearance

Sources:

http://asgap.org.au/APOL15/sep99-6.html

Book “Wild Plants of Greater Brisbane” a Queensland Museum Guide

http://blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/2009/09/kitchen-gardener-ep-5-lilly-pillys-and-citrus.html

This bird is one extremely large and noisy critter, hence the interest from the neighbours.  He has been with or following the resident crows and has been perched on the tallest tree in a neighbour’s yard, too far for us to get a close look at him to be able to properly identify him until today when he was perched a bit closer to us.  After some research we found out that he is a juvenile Channel-billed Cuckoo.

Merlo helped me with my research

As I have not been able to get close enough to him yet, I borrowed these photographs from the Internet

Juvenile Channel-billed Cuckoo taken by Anthony Katon

Adult Channel-billed Cuckoo taken by Paul Walbridge

This large bird is 65cm in length and is sometimes referred to a a Stormbird. It is the world’s largest cuckoo who migrates to north eastern Australia from New Guinea and Indonesia each spring.

It has a massive, dirty pink coloured beak and long tail with a distinctive, almost hawk-like cruciform flight silhouette.  The juvenile we are seeing has pale tips to the feathers and wings and the rest of his plumage is buff.  Mature birds have red skin around the eye and are more grey in colour.

Photo by Bill Oakley where you can see the red skin around its eye when it matures.

They eat insects and fruit, particularly figs and sometimes the nestlings and eggs of other birds.

What’s interesting about this bird which explains why he is with the crows is that Channel-billed cuckoos are brood parastites – instead of raising their own young, they lay eggs in the nests of other birds which become their hosts – particularly crows, currawongs, butcherbirds and Australian magpies.

The Channel-billed Cuckoo do not eject their host eggs upon hatching or kill the host chicks, fortunately, but sadly seldom survive due to the cuckoo monopolising the supply of food and they soon very quickly outsize their smaller host parents.

With a host parent, pied currawong.  Photo by Duncan Coles

I forgot to mention that they are extremely noisy and this juvenile has been announcing his presence to us and the nearby neighbours with his continuous and harsh ork, ork,ork.

My aim is to try and get some good photographs of him but this will prove to be tricky.

Info and Photo Sources:

http://www.wiresnr.org/channelbilledcuckoo.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel-billed_Cuckoo

http://www.aviceda.org/abid/search.php?keyword=Channel-billed+Cuckoo

Two hungry mouths

Mom’s looking for tucker

I’m starving, wish mom would hurry up!

It’s my turn!

I said it’s MY turn!

What a Cry Baby!

Anything to shut you up!

Now, what’s worth mentioning is that the other adult bird, Toenail,  the male I am assuming, who came down at the start of lunch, disappeared early (that would be right!) and left poor Skitsy, the missus in charge!

Later on that afternoon, my husband called me outside to announce that there are now three offspring!  The other one was introduced to us today!

Below is an extract from Wikipedia

“Chicks develop fine downy feathers on their head, back and wings in the first week, and pinfeathers in the second week. The black and white coloration is noticeable from an early stage.  Nestlings are fed exclusively by the female, though the male magpie will feed his partner. The Australian Magpie is known to engage in cooperative breeding, and helper birds will assist in feeding and raising young. This does vary from region to region, and with the size of the group—the behaviour is rare or nonexistent in pairs or small groups.

Juvenile magpies begin foraging on their own three weeks after leaving the nest, and mostly feeding themselves by six months old. Some birds continue begging for food until eight or nine months of age, but are usually ignored. Birds reach adult size by their first year. The age at which young birds disperse varies across the country, and depends on the aggressiveness of the dominant adult of the corresponding sex; males are usually evicted at a younger age. Many leave at around a year old, but the age of departure may range from eight months to four years.”