Not exactly a bird

Going for little walk by the river at South Lismore my wife espied this lovely echidna wandering out of the weedy bush at the rivers bank. It was a nice sunny winters day.

Superb Fairy Wren in the Grass

The wonderful thing about our garden is the number of birds and the variety. They are lovely things but usually so hard to photograph. I managed to get a good picture of this Superb Fairy Wren on the grass he had his girl with him. I'll have to upload a picture of the lady later. The little fellow was exploring after having a drink and a wash. Coming into a dry period now and getting a little hotter as summer is on the way.

Male Superb Fairy Wren

Superb Fairy Wren

Winter is well and truly set in, June is almost over. The morning has an occasional frost and the birds seem to be braver when searching for food. I spied this Superb Fairy Wren in the garden. It was with its lady friends who lack the blue colour of the male. I've been trying to take a photo of this little fellow for quite some time but he is usually too quick to get a good picture. I just managed to get this snap of him while he was checking out the bird feeder. Previously he'd been hopping through the onions, celery and beans in the vegetable patch.

More birds in the garden

It was a wet November day, but the King Parrots didn't seem to mind too much, in fact they seemed to be happy to be out in the weather. We've seen them occasionally fly by or land in a tree but this time they stayed for a munch on the old seeds. They are lovely looking birds. I'm so glad we had them around. Here is a photograph of the male, the female was nearby, the females  have green heads.

Our Trip to Southbank

On our recent trip to Southbank, Brisbane in November, the weather was overcast and clearing to a hot sunny day, we saw some interesting birds and some common birds. The bird on the left is Buff-banded Rail. They like to live in well hidden grass in dense vegetation and are common in south-western, northern, eastern, south-eastern mainland Australia and Tasmania.

One of my favorites when I go to Brisbane is the Australian Brush-turkey, they cause havoc in the garden, but I still like them. When disturbed they like to hide in trees and look like strange vultures. Interestly, the Australian Brush-turkey has a lilac wattle (the colour around their neck) when found in Cape York whereas the we found was yellow.

Not far from the Australian Brush-turkey I found the Australian White Ibis. This white Ibis with black naked head and neck and with black plumes and feathers near tail. Sometimes shows scarlet naked skill on under-wing in flight.

The Pied Butcherbird is common in woodland, farms, roadside,towns, plains where there are enough trees for cover. Their voice is like a fluting piping and mimicry, loud 'zwit' of alarm. 


Sourced The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds, second edition.

Figbird in the garden

At the end of November I noticed two birds in the back of our garden. I'd seen them before, often in larger groups but since I've been so ignorant of birds I didn't know what they were. The two birds looked identical except for the colour around the head. Especially around the eye. The picture is of the male the other was a female as it lacked the red colour around the eye.

Eastern Rosellas feeding in Lismore

The end of a very warm late October day in Lismore and some Eastern Rosellas (Platycercus eximius) turn up at the bird feeder. They are very pretty birds but they have a very awkward and harsh sounding squawk especially in flight but then they land on the bird feeder they have a much nicer sound. They always seem to be around Lismore during spring and love eating large seeds. I've never seen them eating in the wild though I assume that grasses and small fruits would be their diet.

The last few weeks have been very dry with alternating periods of hot and cool weather. Since the dry has developed I have noticed that the Rosellas seem to be more frequent visitors at the bird feeder, maybe the weather has been affecting their food supply? Either way the birds were not very happy about my presence and although I kept a good distance they always kept an eye on what I was doing. These two look a little different, I understand that the one with a patchy appearance on the head is immature.