White-winged Choughs, Botanic Gardens, Canberra

White-winged Choughs, Botanic Gardens, Canberra

The White-winged Choughs I saw in the Australian National Botanic Gardens earlier this year are obviously used to large numbers of people visiting the gardens. They seemed quite at ease with me taking photographs of them from a few metres away.  They were more intent on finding something to eat.

White-winged Choughs, Botanic Gardens, Canberra

Choughs spend much of their day on the ground, scratching in the dirt or removing any mulch put there by gardeners. One of them found a buried cone from a tree and there was suddenly a great kerfuffle and they all came running to have a taste of this delicacy.

I didn’t distrub them to have a closer look at the cone, but in the photo it seems to be something like a Hakea seed cone. It could also have been a Banksia seed cone.

Banksia flower, Botanic Gardens, Canberra