Our Gardens

Amend the Sacred Kingfisher to an Azure Kingfisher.

Should have checked the bird book instead of relying on memory!

@Sister
Ian search his bird photo bank and found a photo of a Spangled Drongo taken late 2018.


For a bird with a name of Spangled Drongo, he is pretty ordinary. No bling, no jewellery. Only thing "bling about him is his beady red eye.

In the bottom left corner of the photo, sitting on the waterbowl is a Sacred Kingfisher. 

 @Sister
I am a little envious of your koalas and echnidnas.

We have more birdlife than animal life on our block. We have the reptiles - skinks, house geckos, blue tongues, bobtails,
gilberts dragons, bungarras, frill neck lizards and snakes of course. There is a very large olive python living in the shed and many "cheeky" snakes (King Browns) are often observed. The olive python often hangs off the rafters watching Ian "create".

However apart from the very cute agile wallabies not much else in marsupial life. A girlfriend who lives some 5 blocks away has a family of echidnas at the back of her block where it backs onto bush. Some years ago there were northern quolls visiting, however the neighbours aquired themselves some very large pig dogs and I haven't seen the quolls since. 

Very relunctantly we fenced the agile wallabies out of our block. They were doing much damage to the garden and reticulation. We seemed to spend much of our precious Sunday off repairing reticulation lines that had been dug up or chewed off.

However the wallabies did have retribution. After a weekend of fencing some 500 metres of pig wire topped with 3 rows of barbed wire, there were many cuts, scratches and barked knuckles. That was 10 years ago - couldn't do it now!

I do love the sound of a Spangled Drongo - what a great name.
We have:
Adelaide Rosellas
Lorikeets
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos
Tree-climbers
Superb Blue Wrens
Magpies
Murray Magpies 
Red-Tailed Finches
Wattlebirds
Golden Whistlers (very rare)
Scarlet Robins
Kestrels
Boobooks
Wedge-tailed Eagles (only in the sky)

and others that I can't remember!

The kangaroos have been coming down for years to eat the lawn in the dry months.  The mum usually comes down with new joey and last year's joey and tolerates us - the old man hangs around on the hillside until we've gone.  We've seen a lot of young adult kangaroos this year as well (previous joeys, perhaps) and we've been leaving the buckets of water out for them.  We also get a lot of koalas around and the odd echidna.  Of course the reptiles are well-represented as well - skinks and geckos, sleepys and blueys, and brown snakes and red-bellied blacks (not so nice to see).  The cat came off worse from a brown a couple of years ago - an anxious wait and $1200 later...

I've got white winged choughs here at the moment. They behave a bit like apostle birds, hanging out in family groups of 10 or so. I've never seen them this far down out of the hills, but it's been so dry nothing surprises me.

@iserbrown; those Indian Miners have such 'cranky' faces too! On our birdbath right now there are Crested Pigeons and Red-rumped Parrots.

@annie c
What a beautiful chorus!  Love the collection and some so colourful.

Yes it's true CWA birds
"...And that loud chattering is how it got its other name: the CWA bird. Which refers to the Country Women’s Association, because apparently these nattering birds used to remind people of their meetings..."

Here we have visits from
Rosellas
Kookaburra 
Finches
New Holland honeyeaters
Cockatoos
Black yellow tailed Cockatoos 
Pallid cuckoo
Pigeon doves
Butcher birds
Magpies
The horrid Indian Miner birds
Et cetera

Nature is a marvelous thing

Take care

@sister your wonderful photo reminds me of the old Sylvester cartoons and his son where they'd see a mouse in one room, Sylvester would follow it into another room and there would be a kangaroo. He'd react in horror and his son just couldn't understand lol.

Reminds me of a time a few years back when my cat heard a lizard rustling in the garden.  He went to look for it and got the shock of his life when a blue tongue appeared and hissed at him.  He backed away so fast and came hurtling over to me with the same expression on his face..."WTF is THAT???  That ain't no lizard!!  Help!"  I had to laugh.

@jennyss
Oh but I love it!

Dear @"Annie C", What a bird list! How exciting. I would love to see the Tawny Frogmouths, Dollarbirds and Rainbow Bee Eaters. The other name for Apostlebirds down here is 'CWA Birds' - that's rather sexist and politically incorrect too!