Night bird antics

A few years back it was conventional wisdom that Powerful Owls only existed in the Canberra area in the Brindabellas.  Then a bird of this species was found in the Australian National Botanic Gardens by a group on a beginners bird walk - fortunately led by an expert who recognised the bird and alerted many others.  Many folk (at least 400) flocked to the Gardens to see it.

A year or more later another bird (of course, possibly the same one) was seen in the Rainforest Gully of the gardens.  Again many people went to see it.

On 27 November 2014 a very alert COG member looked up after noticing a guano patch on a bike path past the North Canberra Bowling Club.  There was a Powerful Owl sitting high in a very tall tree.  It has been seen by many people in the following days.  I joined that number this morning.

My first view was from the back ...
 ... and then by stepping into Haig Park the front.
I have clipped the following image from the preceding one to reveal the talons.  This also shows that the bird isn't holding prey this morning.
Hopefully the following description is enough of a warning for any sensitive souls that the link in the next sentence is nature red in beak and claw.  An expert COG member has posted most excellent video of the bird coughing up a pellet and then feeding on a Ring-tailed Possum.

I have not seen this species in the vicinity of Carwoola but have heard one once.  Their call is distinctive.

Also on the night-bird front, our Tawny Frogmouths have been off on tour for a few days but were located yesterday on a roost used for the first time this year by the female during the brooding period .
This is the first time I have seen the chicks split themselves between parents.  They usually stick close to Dad during the day.

They returned to this roost 3 days later, adopting a more customary arrangement.  The arrows are added by me to highlight where the birds are, not indications of Jovian vengeance. 
At least one of the chicks is trying a camouflage pose: he didn't hold it for very long!

Comments

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

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more