Blog Archives
Noisy Miner babies
For a couple of weeks, we had the pleasure of hosting a nest of Noisy Miners in our garden. The adults built the nest in a tree fern, right in the hollow where the new fern leaves sprout. This picture shows the tree fern, with the nest and one of the adult birds in attendance:
It’s a good thing that little Noisy Miners grow so fast. A few years ago, some Red Wattle Birds attempted the same thing, and were forced to abandon the nest when the fern leaves pushed it out of place!
This video shows an adult bird feeding the babies:
With Noisy Miners, feeding the little ones is a communal responsibility. You can’t tell which are the parents. We sometimes saw three birds waiting in line with a goody for the growing babies.
In the above video, the adult is regurgitating nectar or other food. Its long, thin tongue flicks out occasionally. In the next video, a bird brings a large green bug and passes it to the babies. I’m not sure if the bug is a mantid or something else. It’s too early in the season for cicadas:
Here’s a still picture of the little ones begging for food:
After a couple of weeks of feeding and fast growing babies, the nest became pretty full. Then one day, the little ones left the nest. I wasn’t there to see this exciting event, alas. I took this video the day before the nest was suddenly empty:
The little ones are now all round the garden, peeping constantly to get the adults’ attention. For the most part, they’re tucked away safely in the foliage, hard to find from my vantage point on the ground. This picture is of one of the little ones, a few days after leaving the nest:
Here’s the empty nest, with a clothes peg for scale:
Common name: Noisy Miner, also called Australian Miner
Scientific name: Manorina melanocephala
Approximate length of adult bird: 26 cm
Date spotted: September 2021 (spring)
Location: Near Sydney, NSW, Australia
Magpies carolling with a view of Sydney Harbour
This morning I walked along a path overlooking Sydney Harbour and the headlands that act as a gateway to the ocean. A treeful of Australian Magpies provided musical accompaniment.
Common name: Australian Magpie
Scientific name: Gymnorhina tibicen
Approximate length: 40 cm
Date spotted: 3 October 2021 (spring)
Location: Dobroyd Head, Sydney Harbour: 33°48’36.7″S 151°16’03.4″E
More calls of the Grey Shrike-thrush including a sneeze
A few weeks ago, I posted my first video featuring the call of the Grey Shrike-thrush. I’d read that these birds make a variety of calls. Here are two more to add to the collection: A, short, high-pitched shriek and a longer call interrupted by what sounds like a sneeze or a snort!
When I first heard the sneeze-interrupted song, I thought the bird had made a mistake. But it made the same call consistently over quite a few minutes. Maybe the call is this bird’s variation on a theme, or perhaps the bird is a juvenile who’s still perfecting its song!
Common name: Grey Shrike-thrush
Scientific name: Colluricincla harmonica
Approximate length: 23 cm.
Date spotted: 8 September 2021 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’15.6″S 151°14’51.5″E
Call of the Grey Shrike-thrush
I’ve heard the lovely, clear calls of this bird a few times, always in the same spot on one of my favourite walks. Now at last I’ve identified the bird. It’s a Grey Shrike-thrush (I’m pretty sure) and this is only the second time I’ve managed to get some pictures of one of these birds.
In this short video, you can see glimpses of the bird and hear its call:
Evidently these birds have a variety of calls. In the next video, the same bird is singing a slightly different tune:
The next video gives a much better view of the thrush in its favourite gum tree, but the bird is taking a break from singing. In the background are the harsh calls of a wattle bird:
The bird is rounder and more fluffy than the drawings in my bird book, but the colouring and the song seem right for a Grey Shrike-thrush. I think the difference arises from the fact that there are different races of this bird in various areas of Australia.
The wing feathers have a lovely olive tinge, blending in nicely with the gum nuts and leaves:
Common name: Grey Shrike-thrush
Scientific name: Colluricincla harmonica
Approximate length: 23 cm.
Date spotted: 16 August 2021 (winter)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’07.4″S 151°14’36.8″E
Local cockatoos excited about new tree stumps
Over the last few weeks, our neighbours have been cutting down some tall trees on their property. The local cockatoos are excited about the new tree stumps that have appeared in their neighbourhood. (I call them “stumps”, but they’re several stories high.) The birds arrive on most evenings to sit on the stumps, and have started hollowing out the centre of one of them. I guess the cockies may be thinking the tree would make a good nest.
You can see the tree felling in my earlier post, Magpie scolds tree feller.
Call of the Red Wattlebird
This Red Wattlebird was quite chatty in the crisp morning air.
Usually when walking in the bush I hear the more raucous croaks of this bird and its cousin, the Little Wattlebird. So it was nice to hear something a little more melodious.
Here’s a still picture of the Red Wattlebird, showing the red flap below its eye which gives the bird its name:
The feathers on its back are quite decorative, and a sun ray lights up the yellow on the bird’s belly:
Common name: Red Wattlebird
Scientific name: Anthochaera carunculata
Approximate length: 35 cm
Date spotted: 24 April 2021 (autumn)
Location: Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’10.0″S 151°14’53.6″E
Eastern Whipbirds chatting and pecking at tree
An Eastern Whipbird was busily pecking at a tree, presumably to get at insects or grubs under the bark. Pretty soon, another bird joined the first one. They had an amiable chat. It looked as if they were consulting on how to tackle this troublesome hard bark on the tree. The first bird went back to the task while the other looked on. After a while, the first gave up and the second stepped in to give it a go.
I think the birds are quite young, because their feathers are a little untidy and the white cheek patches aren’t clearly defined. Perhaps they’re siblings!
It was interesting to see the birds interacting and to hear their chatting sounds. I often hear the long drawn-out call that gives these birds their name (this post has some examples) but I haven’t seen them chatting before.
Common name: Eastern Whipbird
Scientific name: Psophodes olivaceus
Approximate length: 30 cm
Date spotted: 15 February 2021 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’44.3″S 151°14’58.8″E
So cute! Baby kookaburra in nest
For the past few weeks, I’ve been following the progress of a baby kookaburra and its parents. The baby was housed in a termite nest on an old, dead tree. The first time that I noticed the nest was more than a month ago, on 17 November. At that time, the only sign of the baby was a faint crooning sound emerging from the termite nest. I’d heard baby kookaburras before, so I stuck around to see what would happen. Sure enough, an adult bird arrived with some food.
From that day on, I visited the nest regularly. And now, I’m delighted to report that the baby bird has safely left the nest and is being fed in the nearby trees.
The first video shows the baby kookaburra just a few days before it left the nest. The date was 14 December, almost a full month after I first noticed the nest. In the video, the baby peers curiously (and hungrily, no doubt) from the nest. You can hear an adult kookaburra off camera, calling to let the chick know that food is on its way. I moved the camera to take in the adult on a nearby branch. The bird checks the surroundings carefully, including me, to decide whether it’s safe to approach and feed the chick.
Meanwhile, the chick becomes more vociferous and sticks its head further out of the nest, impatient at the delay. The adult moved to a different branch to give itself a direct line of flight. I managed to catch a view of the adult there too, before moving back to the nest in time to see the adult arrive and feed the baby:
The parents were tireless and devoted in their care for the baby. On a couple of occasions, I spotted them foraging for food:
When the parents were not around, the chick eyed me from the safety of its home. The smallest scuffle was enough to bring an inquisitive eye to the hole in the nest:
Partially hidden but oh so curious:
The nest was on the skeleton of a dead tree:
This is an earlier, short video (taken on 3 December) showing a parent arriving to feed the chick:
When I arrived on 17 December, the nest was quiet. Again the next day, there was no activity at the nest. I explored the area and soon heard the characteristic crooning of a kookaburra youngster. I found it in a quiet, tree-filled glen, being attended to two adults in turn. It was early in the morning, and the birds were high in the trees, so I didn’t manage to get a good photo. This is the glen:
This is the only photo I have of the youngster. Alas, I didn’t get the full head in the shot, but you can see the fluffiness of the feathers and the short tail:
Common name: Laughing Kookaburra
Scientific name: Dacelo novaeguineae
Approximate length: 47 cm
Date spotted: 18 December 2020 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia
This is the view the baby kookaburra had from its nest. It looks over Manly Dam towards the dam wall, with a bottlebrush bush glowing in the early morning light. A room with a view indeed:
Finally, here’s the view that the baby must have seen when it first emerged from its nest and could look in the other direction, up the length of Manly Dam:
Song of the Golden Whistler
In competition with the raucous remarks of a nearby cockatoo, this little Golden Whistler sings his heart out.
Golden Whistlers are also known as thunder birds, because evidently they tend to sing in response to loud noises. Maybe the calls of the cockatoo were actually encouraging the little songster!
Common name: Golden Whistler
Scientific name: Pachycephala pectoralis
Approximate length: 16-18 cm
Date spotted: 9 December 2020 (early summer)
Location: Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°47’02.4″S 151°15’14.9″E
Strange call of the brush-turkey
Australian Brush-turkeys. They’re the bird everyone loves to hate. They’re not pretty to look at, and they have a habit of tearing up your garden to build their mounds. But they have a certain dignified strangeness that appeals to me.
One of the strange things about a brush-turkey is the noise it makes. The sound you’ll hear most often is a quiet grunt, like the cluck of a contented, somewhat deep-voiced domestic chicken.
But every now and then, male Australian Brush-turkeys make a weird, booming sound:
Oo-oo-oom
Listen to the sound of this male brush-turkey:
Did you hear the noise? Play the video again if you missed it. Making the noise seems to entail a lot of effort. The bird starts by ducking its head, a little like a pigeon doing a mating dance. Then it lifts its head, and the loose yellow skin hanging below its neck seems to be inflated with air. Perhaps expelling that air is what makes the noise?
Now that you’ve heard the noise, you may be able to make it out in the next video too. The bird makes the noise near the start of the video, but it’s a little masked by a chatty currawong.
Male brush-turkeys build a mound of leaves and other vegetation, then attract females to lay their eggs in the mound. The warmth from the compost heap keeps the eggs at the right temperature until they hatch. No sitting around on boring nests for this canny bird!
This particular bird seems to return to the same location to build its mound every year. The mound is uncomfortably positioned in a narrow strip between a road and a building. I guess the temperature must be just right. And maybe the presence of humans keeps predators at bay.
Here’s the proud father-to-be:
Common name: Australian Brush-turkey
Scientific name: Alectura lathami
Approximate length: 60-70 cm
Date spotted: 25 October 2020 (spring)
Location: Outside Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’54.1″S 151°15’28.3″E
Sydney Birder 