Some birds raucous, others less so

Some years ago (strewth, it is about 30) when we lived in Scullin we used be very pleased we didn't live in a house in Hawker which always seemed to have 50+ Sulphur-crested Cockatoos sitting in a tree above it.  The noise when we took the dog for a walk in the morning was appalling.

Here in Carwoola these screechers are usually absent, but for some reason (possibly related to seed formation in the Acacias) a flock of 25+ has taken to visiting us.  This morning there were about 40 perched in a couple of trees between the house and the dam and certainly did nothing to improve our view of their desirability.  Even with only 6 or 7 of them calling the din was most unpleasant. Here are a couple of specimens demonstrating the crest!

Confirming my view that one of the things attracting them to the house area is the fruit on the Acacias this image shows a Cockie doing what they enjoy most: destroying stuff!
 The Cockies leave a few things behind.  Both classes of 'thing' are basically white.  One of types of thing  is proof that they have been feeding (no image supplied)  and the other is a feather or two.  The detail of the feathers (click to enlarge)  is very delicate:

While checking this bunch out I located the Tawny Frogmouth family in a roost which was obviously a tad crowded for them.  (They usually choose a branch on which at least the male and the two chicks can sit together.)
 The upper branch, with two birds on it, has been a popular roost for the adults in the non-breeding season.  It is the first time I have seen the chicks in that tree.  I am not sure who is what but suspect the two adults are together and chicks separate.  An issue I have yet to observe is when the chicks depart from the parents: hopefully my increased knowledge of their range of roosts will resolve this.

This entity - the upper single in the group shot - was definitely keeping an eye on me.
While nowhere near the racket from the Cockies, the Frogmouths are not absolutely silent. While the male was brooding we would often the adults making the best known call - a series of 'oooms' at about once a second frequency.  (This is much quicker than the call of the Common Bronzewing - a fat pigeon, which also 'ooms'.)  The young frogmouths making a 'churring' noise (amongst other weird sounds) which has ed me to find them a couple of times recently when they have roosted in unusual spots.

Comments

Wally said…
We have some local cockies that do a few noisy circuits of the sky most evenings. They have shown a worrying interest in a neighbour's pergola.
23 December 2011 at 18:54:00 GMT+11
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the birds: The view from the top of
Read more