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A few days ago I started a category on my photography blog for photos of the Tawny frogmouths. I also did a post on the birds in general ages ago. Well it seems like ages ago. In this post I will tell what I know of their story.


We have had a pair of Tawny Frogmouths living in some gum trees, but a while back I could only ever see one. As it is the nesting season I figured they must have a nest somewhere, I looked for one but didn't find it. Until on morning, my sister and I were wandering around outside when I saw something. 

"Hey Jane that looks like an owl! (Note: Tawny Frogmouths are not actually owls) Actually it could be an owl."
"Really where."
"Up there, it is sitting right where I saw that nest a while ago, I never thought of it being a Tawny Frogmouths nest."



Then a few days ago Mummy found a parent Frogmouth sitting on the grass next to a little lump of feathers. We have now worked out that the little Tawny Frogmouth had fallen out of the nest somehow. The other parent Tawny Frogmouth is still sitting on the nest. Talking about baby birds and nests we had a Noisy Miner bird nest with two eggs in it but then something killed the mother bird and crushed the eggs. later that day we saw a white cat slinging around by the creek. We have seen the cat again since then.

So we were worried that our baby Tawny Frogmouth would not survive long on the ground. It took the whole day for it to get up onto the bottom rail of one of our (sorta ornamental) fences. 


The mother/father glared at me whenever I came close to take  photos of them. The little one hisses and opened up its mouth. They survived the first night and sat close next to each other through the pouring rain. They were still there the next morning. 

Then yesterday morning we could not see them. I wandered around outside looking, knowing that they can be really difficult to see. I couldn't see them, but I thought I heard them or at least one of the adults calling softly. I thought the sound came from in some bushes in our neighbors yard (they have a big dog), but I couldn't really tell where the sound came from. I pushed through the native wattles along our side of the fence and scanned the bushes, I couldn't see anything. Well I could see things but none of them looked like Tawny Frogmouths. 

I never found any feathers, which are usually the mark of a cat, But I found no Tawny Frogmouths either. Most other members of my family also went a looking for them too. 

Then this morning we found them. Sitting on the fence of our vegetable garden. (well it is meant to grow vegetables) We had looked there yesterday, we still don't know where they were yesterday but they are back. For another day at least. 

Lord willing that nasty cat will have to find some other food. Alternatively If we catch it.... or if my saucepan catches it.... Well we shall wait and see. 
22nd Thankyou God:
~That the bird watching excursion didn’t get cancelled
~That it stopped raining
~For the photos I could get so we could identify the birds, even if they were not the best photos
~That (Another friend) could come on the bird watching bush walk too
~For the beauty of the mountains, mist and cloud
~For the golden sunset
~For birds and all their lovely calls 



23rd Thankyou God:
~For more rain then sunshine and a surprising amount of heat in comparison to this morning
~Yummy hot spicy Indian food, at least I think so, It was nice, but very, very spicy!
~Turtles! And frogs!
~That the baby Tawny Frogmouth has not been got by the nasty white cat
 ~Raindrops on roses
~For Christmas shopping
~That it is getting closer to Christmas when we can celebrate your coming to rescue us form sin and misery. 



24th Thankyou God:
~For writers who write good books, books with meaning, that can capture the mind and transport the soul to their made up world, that seems almost real.
~For the writings of C.S Lewis
~For the writings of Calvin Miller
~For the writings of J.R Tolken
~For the writings of John Flanagan, rangers apprentice (I wouldn’t say they are quite up to the standards of ^those^ others but they are really good)
~For the ability to read, and that there are so many books to read!
~For the writings of God. The bible which is written by him through many authors


25th Thankyou God:
~That it is only a month until Christmas!!
~For my sewing machine, (although it is much harder to unpick things sewn with the sewing machine)
~For needles, they are really good for stabbing your self with
~And for threads, and all the colours of thread there are
~Material, I can never have too much… I just have to find somewhere to put it all…
~Our minds, how amazing they are, and all the thought we can come up with. 
~That the Tawny Frog mouths are okay and the nasty cat has not got them!



10th Thankyou God:
~That you took our sins upon yourself and bridged the eternal separation.
~ For strengthening us when we rely on you.
~For sunlight and how it gives warmth/heat and makes everything so bright
~For the beauty of flickering candle light and the dancing shadows it makes
~That today had been so nice and cool, not like the last few days!
~ That I live in a country where your people can gather in your name to worship together and serve one another and glorify you
~ That the virus (computer virus) only killed one computer and didn’t spread to any others


My chickens are getting big!


11th Thankyou God:
~ For the lovely, lovely rain!
~ That it still might rain more
~ That we got 17mills
~ For how beautiful everything looks when the sunlight shines of the water droplets that are spangling the outside world
~For our house that keeps us warm and dry
~For gumboots that keep my feet dry
~For the smell of rain 


12th Thankyou God:
~ That we have had even more rain, we really needed it
~ For laughter and crazy comments/conversations
~ That our new computer came
It was quite funny because when we pulled it all pot of the box, my brother looked at the mouse keyboard and computer and said “Where is the computer?” He meant the screen/monitor and obviously we weren’t getting a new one of them but he thought that is the computer. Well I must admit that when I was little I thought that too. The actual computer hides in a cupboard under the monitor and the monitor is the bit that appears to be doing things so it makes sense. 
~ That Daddy helped me plug it all in and showed me a bit of how to set it up and that now we can use it! Yay, but it is windows 7….
~For the photos I could take of the grey crowned babblers (birds) this morning, before the sun went away.
~ For the tawny Frogmouth nest I have been looking for and finally found!
~That we have computers and keyboards and networking and the internet!


I have taken a lot more photos of jars so have done a post on my photography blog




Galah 
Tawny Frogmouth

and this one is actually a..........COW!

Tawny Frogmouth


We have two Tawny Frogmouths that sleep in a big gum tree behind our house.  At one time they were nearly always there on the same branch, then it fell down and they moved away for a while. Now they are back again in the same tree. They can be very hard to spot, as they blend in well with the bark. Sometimes at night we can hear them calling. The sound is deep and rhythmic sort of woooo woooo woooo. 

Link to a recording someone made of their sound.


The first time we heard it we thought it was a frog or an alarm of some electric thing like a phone! Then we went outside and eventually spied him in a tree (at first we were looking on the ground for a frog). We watched it. Then we all glanced away for some reason, when we turned again and he was gone! Not a sound not a stirring! He just disappeared into thin air.

The two Tawny Frogmouths are probably a pair and will stay together till one of them dies. They can live to be 12-14 years old. Unlike owls they catch food using their beaks not talons and wait sitting on a tree branch for their food to appear, instead of flying around looking for it. Considering they haven’t all died that must work, so really they are pretty smart birds. Mostly they eat insects (especially moths) and other crawly things like spiders, centipedes and sometimes frogs.



Cool fact: The tawny frogmouth is not actually an owl but classified with kookaburras and kingfishers.