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. 

I like birds, well most birds. I have been feuding with the Noisy Miner. The relationship I have to the Indian Myna ( not a native bird) is even worse. Indian Mynas are known for terrorising smaller birds and removing eggs from other native birds’ nests, if I see one I chuck anything available (except my camera) at it, sometimes I even hit them.  The Noisy Miner is native but the ones around our house will chase/attack any other birds. Hence we have no small birds here, on occasion we do see one flying for its life with a miner after it or really high up in big flocks. The Noisy Miner is also extremely noisy. If I walk near a tree with one it the racket begins until all the miners nearby are squawking. It is not a nice noise. If they happen to have a nest somewhere they dive bomb anyone who comes near as well as making an even louder noise than normal. Like some magpies do. On the subject of magpies we actually have really nice ones that never swoop at us. This is possibly because we feed them. 

Back to the miners. We have been enemies ever since I can remember. When my sisters and I were little we would sit for ages holding a rope. The rope lead to a stick that held up a basket and under it we put some birdseed. It worked. We caught quite a few that way..... and some other ways too. The Baby birds are quite fun. They are easy to catch for about a week after they leave the nest. The older ones also occasionally get stuck in the vegy garden, we have possibly frightened some of those to death. 

Now the part of the post I was trying to get to. On the west side of the house we have a line of ornamental plums and the miners like to sleep in them and as we found this morning, build nests in them. Now the story I wanted to tell, it took place last night.

Darkness surrounded the sleeping bird. A flash like lightning shone around, but the bird did not wake. Something scraped around under him, but he slept on.  Tentatively a hand reached out and stroked the bird’s tail. Fingers pressed together and pulled down. They pulled again and released. The birds head snapped up, it wondered what had disturbed it. Then the branch it sat upon started to swing from side to side. Something also pulled at his tail, in fact that was what made the branch swing so violently. Then the pulling and swinging stoped. The bird looked around, some unusual shape stood out against the light from the window of the house. The dark shape moved closer and “BOO”. If birds eyes could pop out his would have and if that bird ever had eyebrows they fell off then, just like he did. He fell from the branch, flapping wildly and made a zigzag path into the darkness narrowly missing the shed roof. 
Then as he dropped out of the sky, a fox came along and ate him all up. 

Doesn't that tail just say pull me? 

Well I added the last line on but the rest all happened, and I came back inside laughing. I seriously think that bird looked so surprised. I found it very amusing. No I did not feel sorry for the bird one bit. The miners also chase every other bird around here, even the wedge tailed eagles and my chooks! On the subject of wedgtails and miners:
An eagle soared through the sky followed by about five birds that looked tiny in comparison to his majestic frame. A flock of galahs flew over too. The eagle dived down a bit the little birds continued to pester him and some magpies joined them. Eyes narrowed he twisted back in the air and snatched at one of the little grey birds. His talons closed around flesh and feathers came spinning down from the blue sky. The eagle had the miner bird firmly in his grip. 

Probably shouldn't put 'cute' photos here if I want you not to like them.... 

Tis true and pretty interesting to watch. Both stories are true for the most part, I wrote them from memory so some small bits could be incorrect, but that is how I remember them. Obviously I couldn't write them while they happened..... I just hope that you don’t feel sorry for those nasty miner birds now.

I just realized I hadn’t done a post on my new camera! I bought if off eBay and it arrived a week ago. It has a normal and a zoom lens. The best thing is, all the settings that I can change manually. I have been having heaps of fun changing settings. The zoom lens is really good too. I got some fairly close photos of the eagle chick I first found on My Uneventful Walk.  Birds seem to grow up so fast. I have to climb about half way down the cliff to be level with it.  In case you were wondering the camera is a cannon EOS 600D. The screen can come out and swivel around which is quite useful at times. 

On the same photography talk.... I got the Champion Junior Photographic exhibit at the annual show. And a number of other places and HCs. Hopefully I can take more great shots with this camera too!

 So this afternoon I went on a rather uneventful walk. Well it was until I heard a slithering rustle in the grass by my feet and turned in time to see a nasty, horrible, dreadful, awful, scaly, black snake slither down a hole. My heart beat very fast but luckily I was smart enough not to jump back. If I had I would have jumped of the edge of the cliff I was walking next to.

There is something beautiful in everything......

Eventually I got to the place above where I wanted to go. I headed down the slope. Clambered, slid, picked my way, jumped, sort of a combination of all those.  I tried to avoid, the nasty sticky plants that give one rashes and stick to everything, and the tiger pear, prickly pear, stickybeaks, other spiky plants and falling to fast.

Blossums

Then I found the eagles nest. With an eagle sitting on it but when it saw me, actually from the noise I had been making it had probably heard me for a long time, it flew off. Then I could see a little white fluffy chick and an unhatched egg. Wow. I wonder if the egg will hatch.

Wedge Tailed Eagle and the white fluff in front of it is its chick

I continued to zigzag, jump, and slide down. The slope had grass, ferns, moss, sticky weeds, wild peach trees and wild roses all over it.  Roses are not nice things to grab hold of............I got down to a flat, well it wasn’t flat but it was no longer going down steeply. And the ground was sand. I walked to the river and listened to the water splashing over the rocks. There were a few cattle with really long horns over the other side. Something moved next to me, a dragon sat in the tree next to me. It glared at me with its round eyes. It opened its mouth and roared, wait..... actually it was just a Water Dragon and it didn’t roar. It just hung onto the tree and let me take photos of it.

The Dragon

See long horns

Then I heard them. A crashing came from somewhere further up the river.  Into view came two animals cows, well, steers or bulls, I’m not sure which, but at that time I wasn’t thinking about minor details like that. One of the steers flung up sand with one of its front hooves. They had huge long horns. I switched off the camera and put it on my back, I was scared. They really looked like they were going to charge me. I glanced at the tree next to me. The tree had only small branches but it sloped slightly so I could keep most of my weight on the trunk. The cattle came closer and I was just starting to climb the tree when I realized both the steers/bulls had run into the water and were going across. There were some more cows behind them but when those saw me they turned and ran the other way.

Luckily they ran across the river
Photo is blurry because I used zoom, no time to focus, and funnily enough my hands were shaking.  

Wedge Tailed Eagle

After that I went back up.  I found another eagle’s nest and though I heard a young bird in it but when I got above it all I could see was a galah sitting on the nest, which is rather strange.  I headed back towards home and got some photos of an adult eagle sitting in a gum tree below me. The eagle flew off; I walked after it, well parallel, not over the edge. Then I got another photo when it landed in another gum tree, the process was repeated. It must have thought it was leading me away from its baby.  Then I saw another bird which I had seen briefly a few other times it was a Nankeen Kestrel. I got a few good shots of it.

Nankeen Kestrel

Down below me I heard pounding hooves. Three horses galloped into view on the other side of the river. The huge horned cattle stampeded down closer to the river. The horses were on the river side of the fence and galloping parallel to it.  They went past then turned and galloped back, wheeled around and stood still. Actually I think I heard the horses before I found the Nankeen Kestrel but anyway.

two of the horses....that appear to have no home.....someone must own them.

All in all a rather uneventful walk...........well not really.