The day began so incredibly dull that I thought we were in for more rain.
After the magnificent colour show yesterday morning, this morning Mount Warning looked bleak and one-dimensional. The valley still looked pristine and clear after being washed by the weekend rain, as did the mountain and ranges, but there was nothing outstanding to take a photo of.
Dare I say, after the brilliant colours of yesterday, the mountain appeared … well … boring?
By sunset though, the mountain did not disappoint any longer. The clouds absorbed the colours of the sun and put on a beautiful show in the sky.
To be completely honest, I was not at all disappointed by the mountain. To me, it is always beautiful and magical. I love the way the mountain dominates both my garden and the whole of the Tweed Valley. But now I’m committed to sharing a photo of my beloved mountain each day I want to show her at her spectacular best.
Perhaps I’m setting my standards a tad too high!
I had a flock of figbirds visiting today. The bunch of palm seeds they are feeding on are at the top of one of our palm trees, so the photo is taken on full zoom. Unfortunately the birds aren’t as clear as they would be if they were closer, but I still love to see them munching on the red berries. The bird on the far right of the photo with his nose down is a male figbird and the two other birds with the mottled feathers are females.
One bird I can always rely on to come close enough for a clear photo is a kookaburra. They seem to have a knack of posing in just the right place for me to take a photo with a lovely background.
It took a while, checking the valley at various times of the day, seeing only a sheet of white. Finally, just before nightfall, Mount Warning emerged from beneath her white blanket.
The rain bucketed down for most of the day and during the only break I noticed in the rain I went outside with my camera for a few minutes. It was then that I saw quite a few familiar bird faces around, so I assume they were taking advantage of the dry moment too.
There’s a family of Pied Butcher Birds nearby and I’ve often noticed they take refuge on my veranda on rainy days.
I call the Butcher Bird above Hoppy. They arrived at my house one day with a mangled foot and I feared they’d be attacked by the other birds as can happen when a bird is injured. I thought I’d never see them again, yet here they are, still visiting.
The bird above is another Pied Butcher Bird, but this one is less than a year old. He, or she, usually visits with Hoppy and I’ve noticed he-she also often stands on one foot even though both feet are just fine. I don’t know if Hoppy is a male or female, but I suspect this young one is “hers” which is why it mimics her stance.
The larger bird on my clothesline is a young Australian Magpie, and its little friend is another Australian native bird, a Noisy Miner. I’ve noticed that Magpies and Miners seem to hang out together a lot and even share food without squabbling. They must have some sort of a birdie-world agreement going on!
And the of course, there’s always a kookaburra or two in the garden. They usually have comical expressions on their faces, but I really had to laugh today at this pair with their inquisitive stares and wet, bedraggled feathers!
Where I live on the coast we’ve been lucky. Our maximum temperatures have remained, on average, around the low thirties (or the high eighties if you go by the Fahrenheit scale). It’s the high humidity of our sub-tropical climate that has really knocked us about though.
A bad hair day.
Right through summer I’ve been refreshing the water bowls every morning that I leave strategically placed where my beautiful feathered visitors will find them. I worry about the birds constantly, wondering whether I’d lose any of my regulars, but most of them continue to show up every day.
It’s a relief knowing the worst of the heat is behind us. Last night we had quite a bit of rain and this morning the air felt cool, fresh and still. My resident kookaburras came to visit, singing their raucous territorial song in my front garden, and in the distance I could hear another flock of kookies staking a claim on their territory in reply.
Learning to trust.
It’s been a few weeks now since my original, Larry, visited and I miss seeing him. His lady friend, Shilo, who would once hide behind Larry, peeking out to see if I’d noticed her, visits still with the rest of the flock. But I’ve noticed a change in her manner. She flies down to sit close to me when I feed the others. And when I pass her food, her super-timidness has been replaced by a confident gesture – by Shilo’s standards at least – she now grabs food from my hand before joining the others.
Larry. Photo taken December 2018.
She’s not as gentle as Larry. Larry had a confident air, a steadiness of eye that I’ve never noticed in any other bird. I could pass the tiniest morsel to him and he’d peck it gently from between my fingers. But Shilo wouldn’t dream of allowing me to hand-feed her when Larry was around.
I wish Shilo could tell me what has become of Larry. My fearless friend has been visiting for over ten years, and given the lifespan of a kookaburra is around 11-15 years, maybe Larry didn’t make it through the heat of the summer. I prefer not to think about that possibility though. Kookaburras mate for life, so what is Shilo to do now?
A new addition to the clan.
Thankfully, Larry and Shilo’s clan has grown in numbers over the years. Now, every afternoon when they visit, I do a head-count. I have seven regulars visiting. Hopefully some of the younger birds are noticing the trust Shilo has in me. Perhaps in her timid way, Shilo is doing the same as Larry, by setting an example of trust.
Maybe over time, the youngsters will learn to trust me too.
Postscript:I have to wonder, are birds psychic? Three hours after writing this post I went outside to feed the kookaburras, just as I do every afternoon. Today, as I approached a kookaburra waiting in Shilo’s usual place, another bird flew down … the waiting bird was Larry, and Shilo sat beside him. As usual, she took her food, then joined the others. Larry stayed, gently taking each small piece of meat from my hand as I passed it to him.
I wonder where he’s been? He looked fantastic! Clean, bright eyed, and as calm as ever. 🙂
If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail. ~~ Heraclitus
It’s been an age since I added any new content to my blog or visited any of my blogging friends (again!) but I am still around, still writing, and still trying to fit too many activities into the limited number of hours within each day.
Over Christmas and the new year I am taking a break from university study. I still have another month before my next semester begins, and now the chaos of Christmas is over I can collect my thoughts, attend to long overdue chores, and get my life back on track again.
This afternoon, I downloaded photos I’d taken during the past three months. As always, some photos turned out beautifully, some were blurred, and there were a couple of unexpected images.
I decided to share one surprise photo today.
We live on quite a long block of land and way down the back, in our next door neighbour’s yard, is a beautiful Jacaranda tree. Every spring, the tree treats us to a beautiful array of lilac flowers, so when it was in full bloom in October I zoomed the tree into focus when I could see what I thought was a common crow sitting on one of the tree’s branches.
A distinctive feature of the Drongo is the fish-like tail – very unusual in a bird. In all the years I have been taking photos of my backyard feathered friends this is only the second time I have seen and photographed a Spangled Drongo.
The features of the bird are not very clear in the photo, other than the deep black colouring and the fish-tail, so I have added a link for if you wish to take a closer look at this unusual bird. I’m sure you will enjoy the beautiful flower-foliage of the Jacaranda tree as well.
I don’t know when I will get back to regular blogging, but I have a tentative New Years Resolution for 2019 – to add a new post once a week.
In My World 