Ben Cruachan – natural history

Here at the B C Blog the dry is really starting to bite, the ground is as dry as dust and many plants in the garden are under stress, in short we are hanging out for rain. However, we’ve got trees, we’ve got water, and we’ve got birds. I usually blog about birding trips, not about home, but today, home takes centre stage.
It started this morning when I was standing by the kitchen window filling the kettle, and looked out into the old bottlebrush to see two young Willie Wagtails, still showing a bit of yellow gape. The parents were delivering meals on wings, and every time I’ve gone outside today I’ve been severely scolded, even though the little ones have been thirty metres or more away.
I put a few sunflower seeds in the feeder yesterday, and the Rainbow Lorikeets and Crimson Rosellas have been popping in during the day for a snack. The Magpies and Magpie-larks are never far away in the paddock, and the day’s music has been provided by a Grey Shrike-thrush and the resident Rufous Whistlers.
Welcome Swallows have been using the TV antenna as a convenient perch in between sorties after insects, we tend to overlook these familiar birds, but shouldn’t, they’re quite beautiful and clean up heaps of insects, Pohangina Pete has a gorgeous photo of a juvenile here. Another very familiar bird around the house is the Grey Fantail, these don’t let me overlook them though, they flirt around when I’m doing some watering, and often come nearly close enough to touch.
The front birdbath has been popular today, C called me to see two adult White-plumed Honeyeaters and a young one having a drink and splash. This is interesting, they used to be a very occasional visitor, but this pair has been here for quite a while now and have obviously bred. Maybe they’ll become permanent like our New Holland Honeyeaters, they seem to be able to cope with the latter’s aggressiveness. The Yellow Gums are in full flower, and the pink Ironbarks are starting, so with the flowering Correas there should be nectar for all. After the Greenies left, three Yellow Thornbills and an immature Fantail took over, then all four perched in the big Correa alba to preen their bedraggled plumage.
Half an hour before lunch I put the binoculars around my neck and wandered around the garden, I’d noticed two Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes in the trees, and then, in the Yellow Gum by the wood heap I spotted a young one, past the grotesque stage but not yet as handsome as its parents. This has been a regular occurrence for some years now, a pair, maybe this very one, breeds somewhere close by and brings the young into our trees to look after until they’re independent. While I was looking up at them some Straw-necked Ibis flew over, I guess I can count them too, they often feed in our paddock.
Out to the front then, and there was a Brown Thornbill in the Ironbark, and movements in the Yellow Box gave me Striated Pardalote, and the introduced Goldfinch, a pair with dependent young. The resident exotics, Common Myna, Common Blackbird, Turtle Dove, and House Sparrow, are always in the garden, and the latter gave us a surprise the other day.
The last birds to show up before I started typing this post were a Red Wattlebird, and a Pallid Cuckoo, C heard its distinctive call. I recently posted a photo of a juvenile that has been hanging around, possibly the young of the adult she heard. There is a theory that the cuckoos, although parasitic, stay in the neighbourhood to keep an eye on their offspring, and may even take them when it’s time to migrate north. I give a lot of credence to this theory, having watched Horsfield’s Bronze Cuckoo adults in company with a young one, and even feeding it.
Anyway, back to the surprise, a few days ago C looked out to the front birdbath to see the juvenile Pallid sitting on the rim, being fed by none other than a House Sparrow. Then, later on that day, three of us looked across the drive to see the same thing happen again. The young cuckoo was sitting on the garden edging giving an occasional soft cheep, when down came a sparrow to feed it. It’s not at all likely that the sparrow was the foster parent, just that it was responding to the cuckoo’s begging call as do many others. A couple of years ago I saw a cuckoo chick being fed by three species of honeyeater, they’re great little con artists.
I thought the Pallid would be the last bird for the day, but while we were looking through the window a while ago we saw Blue Wrens and Yellow-rumped Thornbills, they brought the count to twenty four species for the day, all without spending a cent on fuel! The sky is looking a bit threatening at the moment, typical swift weather, now if I could just see some White-throated Needletails that would bring the count to twenty five, where’s my binoculars.


Eucalyptus tricarpa, glaucous leaved pink form of the local ironbark.

PS. 1915 hrs, didn’t get the Needletails, got Galahs instead for the 25.