You lookin' at me?

Such lovely birds, magpies. I like their song better than any other bird's, so I'm always delighted to see them wandering around our garden. Yesterday, one seemed to be finding plenty to eat amongst the mulch around our baby zucchini plant, when it stopped for a moment, looked up, and saw another magpie doing the same.

Oh no! Fear not, the magpie looked at its grazing partner, then continued on with the more important business of searching for insects in the mulch.

This is the downside of installing a mirror in a small garden ... it does look nice to see the reflections of plants in the mirror, and it does help to make the small garden feel a bit bigger, but at the wrong time of year, it can start fights. 

Our grazing magpie was merely curious, but at other times of year, in the mating season, the sight of a "competitor" on their patch sends some birds into a flurry of wing flaps and hops, head butts and feints and other "go away" territorial displays ... and they'll never win against a mirror. The only outcome is that they might hurt themselves, which is something I definitely don't want.

So, when I notice a bird having a fight with itself, doing its own version of Robert de Niro's classic "You lookin' at me?" scene from Taxi Driver, I do shoo it away. One simple fix to the problem in our case is to open my shed door, which, when it swings open, blocks the mirror.

But lots of home owners with generous expanses of windows facing gardens will know what I am talking about, and have a much bigger problem. At the wrong time of day, at the wrong time of year, those windows become mirrors which can send mating birds into lethal frenzies of competition as they try to see off the "intruder" (by flying straight into the window). Whack! Some will do it repeatedly, such is there competitive instinct, and many birds have died for their cause.

It's such a hard problem to prevent, and as most gardeners love to not only see birds in their gardens but actively try to attract winged visitors with nectar plants, birdbaths, etc, it's just a risk for us to be aware of, and to helpfully 'shoo' a bird away from self-harm when you can, but in the mating season, your garden is "territory" to be fought for, and tragedy is always on the cards.

Nesting instincts

I love bird's nests, they're one of the construction miracles of nature, but recently I found a vacated "modernist" nest which shows how some birds are adapting to life in the heavily urbanised 21st-century city.

I found this one in a tangle of cardamom and ginger plants,
which is not where I expected to find one. However, the tangle
is directly beneath one of our olive trees, so perhaps it fell
from that more predictable spot. Viewed from above it looked
like a pretty normal nest, a finely woven dish of plant fibres.

I brought the nest back to the outdoor table under our pergola
to show it to Pammy, who will probably do a painting of it
one day, and by chance the nest was flipped over in a gust
of wind, to reveal a very plasticky surprise below.

I love the non-discriminatory attitude of birds to nest-building
materials. When they discovered the thin shreds of plastic I
imagine they thought "beauty, this stuff is light, strong, can be
woven easily to form a base, fantastic!". I know, I know,
plastic bags kill birds such as seagulls, penguins and many
others in huge numbers, but this use of plastic just shows that
the modern urban world interacts with the nautral world
not just in one way, but in a complex variety of ways, and
the creatures which adapt the best have the best chance of
reproducing and surviving. Sadly, that's Darwin for you. 

I don't know which species of bird built this nest, but I never
fail to marvel at their delicate beauty and complexity. I would
much rather discover a nest built entirely of plant fibres, but
above all else I am glad to know that several families of birds
find our garden a safe enough haven to start a family here.

Hopefully the ring of down around the nest is a sign that
the babies hatched, grew up and made it into the flying club.

The thing that always gets me about bird's nests is the way that each species is hard-wired to construct a certain style of nest from particular materials. The native peewee (or pied mudlark) for example, is pre-programmed to build a very tidy nest from packed mud. In her current art show, Pam has done a painting of one American warbler's nest, which is built as a hanging basket of Spanish moss suspended in mid-air.

In the case of our found nest, the bird's hard-wiring must include a section which is a bit more laissez-faire, saying "find whatever materials you can which can be woven into a shallow dish". I just hope that the little guys made it into the world. And they are free to crap on our clothesline if they like, and chomp our figs and strawberries too. I'll do whatever I can to not get in their way (or wreck the joint) when they're in homemaking mode, and hopefully life will go on this way for many more years.

Bird talk

Most mornings I'm an early riser, up well before sunrise, reading a book in our quiet little kitchen until the sun comes up. But there's one resident of our street who beats me to it every morning. This person.

The koel. Everyone in Sydney knows this bird
not so much by sight as by sound. This black
bird, the male koel, calls for his mate from early
in the morning, like 3am or 4am early, and goes
on with his call all day, at this time of year.
This one creature causes more lost sleep than
any other living thing in Sydney.

He's doing it right now, calling plaintively, repeatedly, as I sit here at my computer this morning. Hopefully this link to an mp3 recording of the koel's call works for you.
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/cuckoos/commonKoel.mp3

Epic post ahead warning! Keep on reading this longish blog posting from here only if you are interested in finding out probably everything I know about birds in my backyard.  

Now, for starters, credit where credit is due, and my theft confessed to with humble apologies. I have pinched virtually all photos used in this posting, and all the sound recordings, from the excellent Birds of Canberra website, found here http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au

I have long wanted to do a posting on the birds which regularly visit our garden, and have proved to be such an inept photographer of them that when I visited the excellent Birds of Canberra website I discovered that they happened to have most of the birds which visit my backyard, here on the NSW coast. Canberra might be well inland and south of Sydney, but it's still only 288km away from here, not that far away as the birds fly.

And so I can at last do my (epic) posting on birds which visit our garden. The list is longish yet that doesn't mean these birds are here every day, though all the following birds are seen here throughout the year, some very regularly. And thanks again to the excellent ornithologists of Canberra for their wonderful work.

The magpie. Often heard and seen here, one of the
most beautiful calls of all, and my favourite.

Magpie's sublime call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/butcherBirdsEtc/australianMagpie.mp3

The black faced cuckoo shrike, named by early colonists.
It's neither a cuckoo nor a shrike, though. Nice looking bird,
often seen on the clothesline or TV aerial looking for food.

Black-faced cuckoo shrike call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/cuckooShrikesEtc/bfCuckooShrike.mp3

My favourite personality in the garden is this little bird. It's the
New Holland Honeyeater and it's a small thing but it's fast,
smart and fearless. I've seen dopey big wattlebirds try to
chase New Hollands out of 'their' grevillea, but the New
Holland just darts here, there, up down and the selfish big
wattlebird never wins even a point in their scraps. 

New Holland Honeyeater static-on-the-line call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/honeyeaters/newHollandHE.mp3

Here's the aforementioned greedy dope, the Red Wattlebird.
I actually like this flighty creature. That red 'flap' on its cheek
is called a 'wattle', and so it doesn't get its name from wattle
trees. This is an early riser too, often feeding on the flowering
gum tree which is our street tree. It's the only native bird we
have a nickname for, and I call him or her 'Cluck', as that's
what its call sounds like, which goes like this... 

Red Wattlebird call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/honeyeaters/redWattlebird.mp3

Lots of people call this a Blue Wren, for obvious
reasons, but only the males are blue, and as Mrs
Wren is brown, the 'correct' name of Superb Fairy
Wren is a better description. These little insect eaters
 are tiny and get about the garden in a pretty little
hoppity hoppity way. One little thing I like about these
wrens is that the male juveniles are brown, like
their mums. When they grow up and start to colour up as
blue, Dad drives them off. "Clear off son, you're blue."

Superb fairy wren call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/fairyWrens/superbFairyWren.mp3

Kookaburras aren't plentiful here but I do see them from time
to time. The impressive thing about these birds is their size,
they're hefty birds, strong with a big beak that's perfectly capable
of picking up an unsuspecting snake. As a child I can recall
hearing kookaburra calls being used in Tarzan movies!

Kookaburra call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/kookaburras/laughingKookaburra.mp3

I hate seeing these squawky, destructive hoons sitting on the
fence. These Sulphur Crested Cockatoos are big birds too,
so they just do as they please. A while ago, after I had planted
out a whole bed full of vegie and flower seedlings, one of these
birds came down, walked around the bed ripping seedlings out
of the ground, looking for worms wriggling underneath. The
only thing I like about these birds is their waddling walk, and
seeing them fly off into the distance, of course.

Sulphur-crested cockatoo's appalling, loud call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/cockatoos/sulphurCrestedCockatoo.mp3

With its impressively fearsome big, black beak
the Pied Currawong visits only occasionally,
but it's always a wonderful big thing to behold.
Shame it eats bird babies so much, but it has
to make a living and that's its job.

Pied Currawong call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/butcherBirdsEtc/piedCurrawong.mp3

This tiny and extremely pretty little bird, the Spotted Pardalote,
is a rare visitor to our garden, and when Pam saw the first one
we were genuinely excited. We do see them a few times each year,
but each visit is a special occasion. We suspect they nest down 
at the local golf course, which is nearby and sited on a river,
the kind of habitat our bird book says Spotted Pardalotes prefer.

Spotted pardalote call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/tBills/spottedPardalote.mp3

Alas, so very plentiful when we first arrived here
21 years ago, these Silvereyes are now a rarity
here, but I do occasionally see one still. A small
bird with a striking white ring around its eye
it's a busy, chatty little personality.

Silvereye call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/tBills/silvereye.mp3

Another lovely personality is the Willie Wagtail, a smallish fantail
bird who waggles that tail as it looks for insects and grubs.
While a common bird in general, its visits here are just occasional.

Willie Wagtail call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/sittellasetc/willieWagtail.mp3

With an appalling screech of a call that's like fingernails on a 
blackboard to me, the Peewee or Magpie Lark has won back
my sympathy, as I have learned that it is a common dupe for
the cuckoo-style tricks of that annoying koel which wakes up so
many people. Koels lay their eggs in Peewee nests, and when
the baby koel hatches it pushes all the Peewee babies out of the nest
(to their doom) and then the Peewee parents exhaust themselves 
trying to keep up food supplies to the huge, ever-hungry koel baby. 
Ain't nature cruel sometimes! 

Peewee (Magpie Lark) loud car-alarm screech
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/sittellasetc/aMagpieLark.mp3

I'm caught between admiration and dislike of this bird, the Noisy
Miner, which is plentiful on the street side of our house, and
mercifully not so often seen in our backyard. I admire them for
their unlimited reserves of bravery as they fight birds two, three
or more times their size (in packs). But they are bully birds
who just live to dominate their territory and constantly try to
shoo away 'intruders'. Their natural habitat is 'forest margins',
ie, trees on the edge of a forest, with light scrub or grasslands
beyond, and that's a hell of a lot like parkland and suburbia,
so they are in huge numbers here in Sydney. They don't really
like our backyard as it's too densely planted for their liking. Phew!

Noisy Miner's noisy call
http://www.garden.canberrabirds.org.au/sounds/honeyeaters/noisyMiner.mp3


Almost finished, but not quite. All photos and bird calls featured above are from the Canberra Birds website, but they didn't have every bird which visits our garden, so here's a few more. Continuing my ignoble tradition of thieving both bird photos and recordings of their calls, I have proceeded to the wonderful 'Birds in Backyards' website for these next items. It can be found at http://www.birdsinbackyards.net

This Red-Whiskered Bulbul isn't a native bird
but one family lives here. Every year Mr and Mrs
Bulbul make a nest in our Murraya hedge and
raise babies. I am proud to say that my keen
mulching of our garden with sugar cane mulch
provides some very suitable nesting materials.
Interestingly, I spotted Mr Bulbul the other day
having an all-in fight with himself. He was perched
on the end of our barbecue, flapping his wings
and pecking madly at our garden mirror, in which
he could see his reflection. Hope he didn't hurt himself,
but I do think the reflection came off second-best.

Red-whiskered bulbul call and fact sheet, which includes a little thingy containing its call 

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Pycnonotus-jocosus

And finally, the last and most colourful backyard visitor of all of all is this person, the rainbow lorikeet, in a photo taken by me (the only one in this posting, I am sorry to say).

The rainbow lorikeet, pictured in his favourite spot, our
Eucalyptus leucoxylon 'Rosea' street tree. This tree flowers
from early autumn to late spring, and the rainbow lorikeets,
red wattlebirds and New Holland Honeyeaters are in
constant competition for the abundant nectar on offer.

If you're a complete glutton for bird-loving blog punishment, here's a link to an earlier posting about an injured lorikeet named Bung who recuperated in our backyard for several days following an argument with a car, prior to (hopefully) returning to his flock. It's called 'Bung's Bingle'.

And again, courtesy of Birds in Backyards, a fact sheet on these birds which includes their not especially pleasing call
http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Trichoglossus-haematodus

Anyone still here? Working from home allows Pammy and me to keep a good, close eye on who visits here, and we never ever tire of our little fun with birdwatching. The one lesson that keeps on popping up from all this bird visiting and watching is that though it may be small, my little backyard is a part of an urban chain of bird-friendly habitat that helps to sustain many hundreds of wonderful lives.

Sharing the space

In our outdoor dining area, there's one seat that we call 'rat patrol'. That's the best spot from which to observe the neighbourhood rat dashing about the garden. We always make sure first-timer guests don't get the 'rat patrol' seat. But before we learned this lesson, it was funny to see the looks on people's faces – usually they just freeze stiff – when they saw the rat. There's a local supermarket nearby, plus several restaurants, so we think the rats come from there. We've never had them in the house, just the garden. Fortunately there's plenty of other wildlife dropping by, and I thought I'd post about some of them here.

This gal is here all the time. The photo was taken today. This is a native honeyeater, a little wattlebird. Another, much bigger, wattlebird, the red wattlebird, also visits often, and they're all here for the nectar of this Grevillea 'Superb', which is in flower all-year-round. It's a remarkable shrub, and an important food source for the wattlebirds. (They get their name 'wattle', by the way, from a floppy piece of flesh, called a wattle, which hangs from their cheek, not from the wattle tree itself.)

Good defensive tactics here from the St Andrews Cross spider. Weave some bold zigzag patterns to visually extend your legs and make yourself look bigger. Must work, because it remains relatively out in the open most of the time.

Praying mantises are never in short supply. As I don't use pesticides they are free to roam where they please, so too the bees who have been madly pollinating my broad bean crops for me this week.

I'm not exactly sure who this is, other than to guess that it's a jewel beetle. Apparently the Sydney area has hundreds of species of jewel beetles, so it's a reasonable guess.

Speaking of bees (earlier on) I recently got a few more than I had bargained for. This swarm suddenly appeared one afternoon on an Ivory Curl street tree (Buckinghamia celsissima) and that was definitely the event of the day for our street. They stayed overnight, and then, around 10 the next morning, took off as a swarm (which sounded remarkably like a low flying aircraft), bearing 120°, altitude 40 feet, speed 10 knots. Never seen them again since. Hope they found a new home, but glad it wasn't in my backyard.

And as I'm not really sure whether that's a jewel beetle in the photo above, I haven't got the foggiest idea who these little people are, but close up they definitely look like mini ladybirds. Every one of my flannel flowers had its own retinue of several of these little people, presumably feeding on the pollen. As flannel flowers are natives I presume these 'ladybirds' are too.

That's it for photos, but there's a fascinating gaggle of other creatures sharing my backyard. Lizards range in size from the ubiquitous tiny skinks up to handsome bluetongue lizards which have visited but are a rarity.

Spiders aplenty in summer, lots of orb-weavers and St Andrews cross in particular. Fortunately no poisonous funnel webs and I've only seen one poisonous red-back in the 17 years I've been here.

Birds aplenty visit, as we have two birdbaths which are cleaned every day. We do get some of the usual inner-city feral birds (eg, sparrows, mynahs, starlings, blackbirds, pigeons, doves) but fortunately not many.

We get far more of natives visiting for some reason: little wattlebirds, red wattlebirds, rainbow lorikeets, blue wrens, willy wagtails, magpies, black-faced cuckoo shrikes, New Holland honeyeaters, cockatoos and, occasionally, the beautiful little spotted pardalote, which was a total surprise (and delight) when it first appeared. I think a photo of a spotted pardalote in my backyard is up there in holy grail territory! One of these days, lord....

Of all the things which attract birds, it's the clean fresh water in the birdbaths. We provide such a reliable supply of it, especially when it's really needed over summer, that I think all the local birds think of our place as the local pub, cafe and wash house.