An unusual visitor
No Comments »10th September, 2017; Category: Kingfishers, Bush birds, Garden birds, Magpies and Currawongs, Murray Bridge
Laughing Kookaburra
Garden Birds
On my database, I record the birds I see in our garden, or on our five-acre block, or flying overhead. I have done this every month for well over 30 years now. In more recent times, I have started recording them on a weekly, and sometimes daily, occasions. This has built up a great base of information about the birds we have resident (present every day), regular visitors (every few weeks or months) and occasional (perhaps one or two sightings a year). So far, the tally is over 110 different species. (I don’t know the exact figure because my database is not quite up to date.)
Rare Visitors
Surprisingly, one of the rarer occasional visitors is the Laughing Kookaburra. This species is widespread throughout southern and eastern Australia and is common in many places. It is a widespread species here in the Murray Bridge region of South Australia too, especially along the Murray River. Despite that, it is a rare visitor to our garden. In fact, until a few weeks ago, our last sighting was just over ten years ago.
Harassment
The individual which paid us a recent visit did not have a good time. As I was getting some photos – shown on today’s post – a Grey Currawong kept on harassing it until it flew off in disgust at the poor welcoming party. I guess that the Currawong chased the kookaburra away to discourage it from visiting its nest, though I have not seen any evidence of the Grey Currawongs nesting so far this year. The Currawong itself is not slow about robbing the nests of other birds, either.
Further Reading:
- Grey Currawong – Birds in Backyards site
- Laughing Kookaburra – Birds in Backyards site
- Lunch Snatching Kookaburra
- A Laughing Kookaburra comes to lunch
Grey Currawong
Laughing Kookaburra
Laughing Kookaburra
Spring – where are you?
Horsfield’s Bronze-cuckoo
It is supposed to be spring here in southern Australia.
The calendar says so, but the weather is not cooperating. Since the beginning of “spring” at the start of September, the weather has been anything but spring-like. In fact, it has been decidedly wintery for the whole month. And August was no better. This year both August and September (so far) have been like the winter we didn’t have earlier on. We had more than double our monthly average rainfall in August and this month looks like going the same way.
To be fair – the earlier months this year were very dry. Large parts of South Australia were heading for a drought, along with other parts of eastern Australia which are still in severe drought. The farmers need all the rain they can get to establish their crops and pastures. The environment also needs the seasonal rains. During the earlier parts of winter, we had very cold nights and lovely sunny days. Now we still have very cold nights – and cold showery days as well. It hasn’t been good weather to get out birding.
A sign of Spring on the way?
A few days ago – on a brief few moments out in the garden between showers and wind gusts – I managed to both hear, and then get good views of, a Horsfield’s Bronze-cuckoo (see photo above). This species spends autumn and winter in the north of Australia and migrates south to breed around this time of the year.
The 14 species of cuckoos present in Australia are parasitic breeders. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, including thornbills, wrens and a range of other species. The parent cuckoos leave all the incubation, feeding and raising of the young to the host species. You could say that they have perfected the art of “out-sourcing” parenthood.
Further reading:
Happy 12th Birthday to Trevor’s Birding
Peaceful Doves are a regular visitor in our garden
Happy Birthday!
Today marks the 12th anniversary of Trevor’s Birding.
It is hard to imagine that 12 years have passed since I started on this amazing journey. I had no idea at the time where it would take me.
Oh, the places I’ve been,
And the birds I have seen,
From the parrots and doves,
And the eagles above.
To ravens and crows
And finches in rows,
The lorikeets too
And kingfishers blue –
I’ve noted them all
Both big and so small.
My camera has taken
A wide range of birds,
Shown here on this blog
Along with my words.
Yes – I’ve been birding in many places on four continents and in seven countries: Australia, Thailand, Nepal, Ethiopia, Morocco, Spain and Malaysia. Many of the photos taken have been shared here on this site. I hope there will be many more in the years to come.
I have written over 1750 articles over those years and I am planning far more in the years to come. I have no idea how many photos I have taken, nor how many I have shared here on this site. I know that I have taken well over 10,000 photos on my camera. I estimate that I have probably shown about 4000 of them here.
On the strength of what I have written here and the photos I have shared, I have had many requests by various groups to be a guest speaker about birds. This is something I really enjoy and hope to do more of in the years to come.
Instead of writing about a particular bird today, I am going to finish this article by posting some of my favourite photos.
Enjoy.
Crested Pigeon
Silver Gull, Pt Elliot, South Australia
Noisy Miner
Female Galah, Laratinga Wetlands
Sacred Kingfisher