Birds in My Garden

There are a lot of new insects, reptiles and birds that I have come across around my house here. It is always a nice surprise to see the different creatures. Australia is pretty well known for the many dangerous animals it has and I remember a few friends warning me about them before I came here.

First, we lived in Melbourne suburb and it was a very quiet neighbourhood with a lot of greenery, trees and grass around. There were so many birds calls which were unusual to our ears which are now pretty familiar. One day we were walking to the bus stop along a small path that took us to the main road and the bus stop. Around that time, I was still not stable in health and so had to walk slowly and hence had the time to look around as I walked. Looking at the amazing variety of different flowers and beautiful gardens. We used to walk that road often to get to bus stop as any outing whether just for buying groceries or to just an outing on the bus to see places, bus was the only way to go.

Suddenly my husband said oh look there is something in the tress high up in front. Large black mass…. Could that be a monkey? He speculated. But surely there are no wild monkeys in the suburbs in this country? We walked towards the tree as it was right by the end of the lane where we turned out on to the road. The size of this creature seemed fairly big .. yes it was big enough to be a monkey. Was that its back we were seeing. But then we were almost up t the tree and this creature squawked. Oh gosh! This was a black cockatoo and it is enormous. Then as our eyes adjusted to the angle and the light, we saw there were 2 enormous Glossy Black Cockatoos sitting on the branch and making soft sounds.

We stood there on the road for a good 5 minutes watching the beautiful birds.

Once again, we had the pleasure of seeing these elusive and endangered birds when we were at Murramurang National Park. We were sitting in the resort and having a cuppa. Suddenly there was a commotion and rustling in the trees….. loud strange bird calls. Everyone got up to look up through the trees to see what bird it was… and out flew a flock of 4 large Glossy Black Cockatoos. Simply beautiful and made me smile happily for the rest of the evening.

More recently, I was walking in my house as per usual and heard some screeching from outside. I live on top of a hill almost at a corner and so when there are bird calls it hard to figure out the direction immediately. So I looked out the front, opened the front door and looked out on that side. After a few minutes I gave up and continued walked. This time the screeching was coming from the back garden. I stopped at the kitchen window to see if there was anything visible. Suddenly I noticed the bark of my large eucalyptus tree being stripped and dropped down on the grass. There was something dark in the tree, could just about see a black bit moving. I went out and stood under the tree, oh my it was a glossy black cockatoo all right.  Just as I stood watching thinking its too late to grab my camera it flew off… a beautiful large yellow tailed black cockatoo.