Birds in My Garden

One of the joys of living where I do is the number of different species of birds that appear in our garden - and in Spring that number increases as the migratory birds come back. We're suburban but surrounded by bush and wetlands.This includes two golf courses - both of which have remnant bush (one has a resident mob of kangaroos), three nature reserves, one surrounding a large lake, another a wetland awhile the last includes wetlands as well as public space and that's without mentioning the numerous small parks nearby.

All these areas are home to many birds and they overflow into our gardens to feed. In the past week we've been visited by some of the magpie clan as well as Australian ravens both of which live in the park adjoining our back fence. As well we've had visiting pink and grey galahs that have dropped in to feast on the seeding weeds that I have yet to get to. I confess that part of my slowness is to encourage the birds. If I weeded every part of the garden as soon as the weeds appeared we'd miss out on these entertaining visitors.

Then there's the willy wagtail (well-named djitti-djitti in the local Nonngar language as he jitters noisily as he feasts on the flying ants that are starting to emerge). He's a feisty little fellow - and very little fazes him. He'll take on anything that he perceives as a potential threat, puffing out his little chest and chittering furiously until they take the hint or if he deems it necessary he swoops. Doesn't matter how much bigger the birds, dogs, people he'll take them on.

The New Holland honeyeaters are around in increasing numbers, too. We have at least one pair nesting in the ferns around the side of the house. It means the ferns and pineapples will have to go unwatered for a few weeks but they should survive. We did see some odd honeyeater behaviour that we've never seen before the other day. We heard lots of bird tweeting and yelling outside the back door and went out to find about a dozen honeyeaters had another one down on the paving and they were attacking furiously. They were so focussed that we were right up to them before they even noticed us.  No idea what that was about but all of them flew off so I guess not much damage had been done.

As well as these locals there are the others that move in to breed during the end of winter and beginning of spring. I saw my first grey butcher bird a couple of days ago. They have a pretty song that you can hear here.

There are a number of LBBs, too. Those are the little brown birds I haven't been able to get close enough to identify. I suspect they're mostly other honeyeaters or gerygones because I've seen them here before but I'll wait until I can actually identify them before I name them.

Then there are the feral birds. These include the ubiquitous doves that are everywhere - those are thanks to founder of the Perth Zoo who was appointed by the Western Australian Acclimatization committee to set up the zoo and to release European species into the wild. Why they thought that was a good idea I do not know but as a result we have populations of the laughing dove and the spotted dove. They're pretty things that don't cause much of a problem unlike the aggressive rainbow lorikeets which may be lovely to look at but take over native birds' nesting hollows and toss out the eggs and chicks, not to mention the damage they do to fruit crops. They're birds I'd be happy to see disappear.

So that was last week in my garden. I wonder what birds next week will bring.