Young Australian Raven

The Wood Ducks are all grown up now and look almost like their parents, now there is only the tiniest difference in size. The young raven still squawks from its nest, soon it will be gliding down to steal my chooks' food… and eggs with its parents. 


The many pairs of Australian or Noisy Miners that plague our place are building nests, sitting and feeding the young that have hatched. White eggs, speckled with brownish orange, particularly so at one end, sit in one little nest lined with stuffing from the padding off our trampoline. While I stood watching, a miner bird flew onto the side of a shed and perched on a metal strip that ran all the way around it. The bird peered down into one of the holes the strip and the corrugated side of the shed made. Poking his beak into the hole he tried to reach a creature in there, failing that he clutched onto the metal strip and looked up into the hole from the bottom then poked his beak in that way. Then he tried the top again and finally the bottom once more and succeeded this time. He flew off with most likely a large spider in his beak.

Walking through the paddock I could hear the little blue wrens calling to one another and far off a Willy Wagtail. A Straw-necked Ibis took off from an old, dead gumtree. I often see the Common Myna by the side of the road while driving to town, no doubt plotting which bird they will assassinate next. They are not a welcome site to any lover of Australian native birds or even other animals, like sugar gliders. The Common or Indian Myna will knock young birds from nests, and, if it does not stoop to that, they will at the least steal hollows in trees to nest in; meaning there is another place taken from our native rosellas, cockatoos, possums and other birds that nest in hollow trees. 

I had another amazing find. Last year a pair of Wedge Tailed Eagles hatched a chick so I did not expect that they would be nesting again this year but they did. The chick had already lost all its white fluff by the time I first saw it. Adult feathers covered its body and were starting to appear on its head. I went down the cliff a little way to get a better look. One of the parent birds took off from a nearby tree and glided gracefully downwards, spreading its wings in a two meter wingspan. 

My new pets arrived yesterday morning. 

Our neighbor a few houses away is moving so they needed to leave a few of their poultry behind. The two I now have arrived, one in a cage in the back of the ute and the other sitting on the passenger seat. In the back of the car stood a male duck, a huge Muscovy duck. I didn't realize they could be so big. I had thought my two girls were big! 


In the passenger seat sat a male bronze wing turkey! They are both pets and not for eating.... despite what others think.

My chooks were all terrified of Mr Turkey and still are rather wary of him. As could be guessed from his arriving in the ute's passenger seat, he is friendly. 

Annoyingly the sun only came out after I had loaded the photos onto he computer, (and the camera battery died in the middle of the first time of loading them on) so they are not taken in the best light.

He is also very heavy! Once I (with the help of my sister Jane) finally got the chooks and ducks into their pen where I lock them at night, I tried to shoo him in too. I failed. Then I tried to catch him and finally cornered him in about the most difficult place in the chook (or should I say poultry) yard, to carry a kicking turkey out of. I didn't drop him though and I got him into the cage. Though I came out rather the worse for it, he must have been walking around in mud and the other stuff that is found in poultry yards, now that had all be transferred onto me and my clothes.... Still he is pretty cool!

Yesterday the boys (my brothers) would both back away from the fence as the turkey came closer, but this morning after breakfast Samuel went outside and gobbled at the turkey which gobbled back. They gobbled at each other for a while but then I think the turkey got sick of it and wandered off. 

Now my new pets need names, but I am not yet sure what those will be. I think I want names from J.R.Tolkien's books, to go with Aragorn my rooster. So it you think of any that would go with either one of them let me know!

Warning 1: here comes a crazy/nonsense poem I have just written, and I know ducks don't run but is sounds better than swam. Warning 2: Don't read the last stanza and if you do, well it is your fault if you don't think I should have made it end that way, also you are naughty, because I just told you not to read it. But of course I said that so you will have to read it I suppose. Well I warned you! 

Muscovy Duck

I had a Muscovy duck called Plucky

And considered myself quite lucky

Until she grew so large

That people thought she was a barge

When really she was a duckie

One bad thing about my duck

Is she turns the river to muck

But she lays ovate eggs

 The size of five hundred litre kegs

To move them I need a truck

My ducks feather size is rather whopping

So when her wings I was chopping

I kept one lovely feather

For a fan in hot weather

But then I sold it while out shopping

My Muscovy duck loves to play

But she swam far down the river one day

And met with a drake

By the name of Pancake

And together they ran far away

Now that is the end of my story

Because what happened after this gets gory

You don’t want to know

How plucky was turned into dough

So back up there was the end of the story