Visitors to My Garden

Over the years we have so may birds in the garden.  Right from the oft seen Common Myna to once in a while seen herons.

Kookaburra

My all-time favourite kookaburra on my washing line. Normally seen to the electric poles and wires. Largest group was of about 11 which I think was a lot of young birds as I believe they were nesting in one of the large trees.

 

Sulphur Crested Cockatoos

These roam in gangs and decimate trees in their path, screech and make a racket. The crest fan out when they are angry and in warrior mode.

Common Myna

These as the name suggests are aplenty. In one of the house’s I lived they had a permanent next in the partly broken guttering of the roof next door. Every year they had a couple of chicks and the racket started when they want to be fed. Woe betide if any ‘stranger’ came even in my garden. They would dive bomb it. That’s how I found my resident blue tongued lizard that I have got in the alter pictures.

Australian Myna / Noisy Miner

These were the fledglings of the noisy miner pair living in one of the near by trees. The chirping of these chicks is incessant and that’s is what drew my attention to them. Took me a while to find them among the leaves. From the hatching to the flying away took 3 weeks. They moved slowly around the couple of trees to test out their wings…. And last see on the wires before they left.

Rainbow Lorikeets

These are by far my most favourite bird. The colours and the sounds are just joyful I find. These were in the second house that I lived. The one after that had a lot of spider flowers and also bottle-brush trees which meant there was loads of honey and flowers for them to eat (. If the doors were open it felt that the birds were inside the house. It took me a while to stop going around the house to check if there were any lorikeets inside the house.

Blue-tongued Lizard

The first time I saw this creature it was in Melbourne. I was surprised to see such a large lizard and its blue tongue but before I could get a camera out it was off under the house. I never managed to catch it on the camera. But the second house here I was alerted to the sunning lizard just on the side of the house in the grass, by the screaming common myna pair from next door. They were trying to peck the poor lizard. I shooed them away and stood guard to let the lizard warm up. The second picture is of another blue tongue that lived in under the garage of the next house. Sadly, I do not seem to have one in this house… though I have seen one come from next door so maybe it lives there.

Wood Duck

No idea what it was doing here…. Am not that close to a water body. The river and duck pond closest is at Parramatta Park.

Ibis

This is seen everywhere here – parks, roads, city centres, gardens and called dumpster turkey as they are known to dumpster dive. In the first house I never saw any. But in the second one there used to be an occasional one. The next house there was a couple walking down the road. This house I have a large back garden and often they come and aerate my lawn by poking holes for worms. The best was a family of 5. The 2 large ones were of course the parents and the other 3 were smaller in size. Of course when I want to put up the picture those 5 can I find it?

Crested Pigeon

These are cute as they teeter about with that crest bobbing about. This one is well fed but usually they are not very big. They are also always found in pairs from what I have noted. The best memory I have of a pair was a courtship dance on the road. Right in the middle of the road the female was walking in front and the male kept coming and touching her. She shrugged him off and went forward. This went on for a minute of two. Her rebuffs were getting stronger and then she just turned and chased him, pecking at him down the road. I just wished I had been able to get that on camera. It was a funny site. I saw that courtship once again next year.

Heron

Now this is a stranger in the local area. Again, I got alerted when the noisy miners went berserk outside. This made me get up and walk around to all the windows to see if I could find the reasons for all this racket and of course I find the heron wandering about the garden next door. The second time it came over to my garden too.

Lastly, I point you to the last blog which had the rarest bird in the Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo.