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.

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.

A visit to The Gully

Going Places with Ernie Dingo – my current favourite TV series on SBS.  Ernie Dingo explores Australia's iconic destinations from the Kakadu National Park to the Great Barrier Reef. He introduces the people who live there in a symbiotic relationship with nature. Ernie is a native Australian who is very attached to his country. He meets people who share his passion with the land. He visits natural treasures and has conservation with locals and explains the tradition of aboriginal people. It is very well done, never over the top, informative and beautiful. Ernie knows a lot of stuff, especially about wildlife, history and plants and he actually connects with people. It is a gentle programme and I thoroughly enjoy the views, conversations and learning about the Aboriginal People and their culture.

The Gully

View of the valley

A couple of week’s ago he was in the Blue Mountains and that was even better as some of the places are familiar. He went to a place called The Gully (to give it it’s Aboriginal name) and this was a place we had not visited. So next week inspired by that programme we found out exactly where it was and made tracks. It is just on the edge of Katoomba. It is called Catalina Park. The traditional owners of this area as the Gundungurra and Darug peoples and they used this area as summer place. It has a water source with wild life and plants for food and medicine – an ideal place to spend hot summers. After white settlement they were forced to settle permanently here. The history states even some white people settled here but it was hard life specially in winter. Houses were made of flattened tins and any thing else they could find. Winter time they used newspaper to keep warm. I have immense respect for them as I would never have survived such conditions.

The Gully Walk

Then, in 1957 some local business men decided to make a race course there to attract tourists and forcibly removed the people. The trauma caused to the land and to the community of people who were living in and around the Gully was profound and still reverberates. The construction of the race course which actually failed to generate the expected tourism devastated the area.

Lake

Duckling

Mother keeping an Eye

On 18 May 2002 it was declared an Aboriginal Place. Today the racecourse track still exists but nature is slowly claiming back the land. There is a lake in a big depression with a path around it and a creek flowing along one side. The creek area is also swampy and the vegetation is low and covers the water to keep it from evaporating in the heat. There is a grassy area with a few benches for sitting and enjoying the peace. A perfect place for a picnic. Now there are plaques in place along ‘The Gully Walk’ around this special place depicting the tragic story of life and times of the people who lived there both Aboriginal and the white. Some of those people and their descendants are still about locally. The traditional owners along with the local council are to look after this place and conserve the area.

Flowering Grass along the race track

Flowers on the grasses

Buds on the grasses

That was the background of the place. The visit was a surprise sprung by my husband. Instead of the usual Saturday morning shopping trip I was expecting he said let’s go see The Gully. We packed some ginger beer and water in the cool bag and stopped to buy sushi for the picnic lunch. We went around the back way, that is to say not by the motorway but via Old Windsor road to Windsor, then Richmond, Kurrajong, Bilpin up Mount Tomah and then Mount Victoria, Blackheath and Katoomba. On the way we stopped to buy some fruit from the shops around the orchards in Bilpin. Some lovely apples and pears were got as well as some local honey.

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We found The Gully pretty easily and parked. Seemed there were only one or two other people there as ours was the third car there. There was quiet and the silence only pleasantly disturbed by the birds chirping in the trees. The feeling was pretty peaceful but reading the plaques about the sad history was poignant. One can almost feel the emotions due to hardships faced by those long gone. And yet there seemed hope as those people were resilient. The walk was a fairly good path with bushed and trees. I saw many which were new to us, so of course photos were taken. The lake in the middle has a pair of ducks with 6 little ducklings floating about enjoying the warm air. After a walk we sat down on the bench beside the lake to have the sushi. But by the time we had eaten one we realised there were small clouds of tiny black flies everywhere and so we decided to move to the car so as not to get added protein in the meal.

Wild strawberries

Wild Strawberries 

Flowers along the creek

Pretty blue flowers 

These look a lot like honeysuckle but of course they are not

Fern in the swamp

Finished lunch and had another little wander outside and looked at the tall trees. Then started our way back.

Beautiful Flowers

A closer look

Three shades of of green with yellow in between

Colours contrasting

Close up of flowers