visitors

Snake surprise

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About to fill a bucket at the little overflow water tank, I just happened to see this little head poking out.

Not the sort of snake to make my heart leap, I knew — although quite what sort it was, I didn’t.

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With amazing liquidity it poured itself up and over my drink bottle and further; it seemed to keep coming forever.

What was even more amazing was how it then threaded itself in and out of the netting rolled and stacked on the tank stand.

When it reached the top it searched for purchase on the plastic tank but kept slipping, so it gave up and reverse-threaded its way back down and away.

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It is, I learnt, a Green Tree Snake, which can grow up to two metres long. This one was long enough!

It’s handsome and harmless, but maybe not so smart, to mistake a green tank for a tree?

Low life, high life

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In the four months I have been here I had not seen a snake of any sort.

Given how many red-bellied blacks I shared my last mountain home with, and that here is equally wet and welcoming for such inhabitants, I have been on the alert, expecting to see their coastal cousins in the back garden or cruising across the grass.

Last week, I pulled up in the ute to see this handsome python digesting its lump of lunch in the sun. I was very pleased that this was my introduction to the local reptilia, and I am still on the lookout for that telltale flash of shiny black.

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There is a tall grandfather casuarina on the bank above the house, and from here the magpies have a fine view and a fine stage for projecting their glorious songs each morning.

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Now that the baby maggie’s most unmusical whinging has ceased, the adults’ carolling is uninterrupted, a joyful accompaniment to my breakfast.

Taking turns

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Before the current deluge began, the small birds appreciated my three-tier insulator bird bath.

Two yellow robins, so numerous here, were happily taking turns at dips in the penthouse pool when a bigger contender landed nearby.

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It was clearly a honeyeater, but which of the umpteen and only slightly varied choices? Typically, the one I thought it most resembled in the bird book turned out to be confined to somewhere impossibly far away, like Cape York. 

So my guess is a Lewin’s Honeyeater, even though it seems less olive than the book’s picture. It is apparently ’fiercely competitive’ and it certainly was very effective in breaking up the robins’ party.

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The little wren who had just landed will be at the bottom of the pecking order.

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The robins gave up hope of a second turn but the dainty wren kept her (or young his) distance to wait it out.

Washed and fluffed and cooled, the honeyeater was still in possession when the phone rang, I moved, and they both took off.

I aim to have several bird baths in more salubrious and safer positions, now that I know that this is such a rich birdland.

Midsummer moments

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Here on the mid north coast hinterland of New South Wales it’s been feeling like the subtropics: storms, showers, searingly hot spells and perpetually high humidity. Not pleasant, unless you are plant life, for whom it’s boom time.

To beat the heat, I get up very early — and so often begin the day with beauty like this.

Apart from what I’ve planted here, birds have distributed seeds and amongst the most noticeable of their crops are the scattered tall sunflowers.

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This King Parrot spotted one whose flowerhead was nicely drying out to seed. It must have been too awkward to eat in situ so it yanked out a chunk as takeaway and found a more comfy perch.

I haven’t seen any parrots new to me, but I keep on seeing birds that are nothing like any I have ever struck before.

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This one literally ran into my view as I sat at my desk. It ran across the grass in the rain, halted, turned and ran back again out of sight.

I need help with this one; the closest I can find is a female Chestnut Quail-thrush, but the patterns and the body shape don’t quite match. Any ideas, birdwise readers?

New Year feathers

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The first feathered visitor of the New Year was an Azure Kingfisher, a beautiful little bird, a visitor that sadly will not be leaving.

I found it lying on the back verandah, presumedly killed when it flew into the glass doors.

If this is to be a problem I will have to hang feathers all round, but so far I hadn’t heard any ‘thunks’. I am hoping this is a one-off.

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Next newly sighted feathered visitor was this unspectacular little bird, that I think is a female Rufous Whistler.

I have been hearing a very melodious series of calls that I think it was making. I hope somebody more knowledgeable can confirm its identity for me.

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On the same day, fine after days of rain, I heard the unmistakable and extremely unmelodious calls of the Yellowtailed Black Cockatoos, perched in trees very close to the house.

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I thought there were two, but then an incessant rusty whining led me to see a smaller third one, which I expect is the young. The father seemed to feed it — do they? — the eye ring and bill colour of the young are like a female’s.  Or was this the female?

Black Cockies are old rainy weather friends, and the similar proximity of densely forested steep gullies and slopes below the escarpment would make good habitat for them. I’ll raise and plant more of the local she-oaks to tempt them back.

Doves for Christmas

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I knew I was blessed with many bird species here that are new to me, but I’d forgotten how exciting it is to meet them!

This pair were poking about amongst the palm litter.

They are Bar-shouldered Doves and they solve the mystery of the repetitive calls I keep hearing.

My book reckons they say ‘cook-a wook, cook-a-wook’, but Ive been hearing ‘potgorok potgorok’.

Don’t ask me why; local dialect?

My book says the Manning Valley, where I now am, is roughly their southern distribution limit, and they stretch north all round the top to the Kimberleys.

Now I truly feel like I’m in a different climatic zone.

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Then they moved into the sunlight, no doubt to show off those lairy pink legs.

Not turtle doves or partridges, but they’ll do me for a Christmas treat.

Stay safe, all.

Winter birds

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A yellow Robin has appeared, flicking itself from one bush or tree or tree guard to another, more like a wind-blown leaf than a bird in flight.

It stays still in any one place for such a short time that it’s hard to get a photo of it. When it lands on the ground you only see its grey back. Usually I see one on its own but I have now spotted two at the same time, although you wouldn’t say they were together.

It appears not to have the grey throat of the illustration in my book, so although on its past seasonal visits I’ve called it a Southern Yellow Robin, now I’m not sure. Could it be a Pale Yellow Robin?

Then one time I heard it make a sound it sat on a small bare tree and went ’ ding, ding, ding, ding,ding, ding…’, non-stop, unvarying, sounding like my Thai temple bell in a stiff breeze.

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The magpies and the kookaburras are still about in abundance, although, like this kooka, they get in a huff at all the windy weather we’ve been having. I love the way to kookas go all punk and fluffily fat to keep warm.

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Of course the most envied critters here on cold wintry days are the pouched babies…

Rosey roosts

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The Crimson Rosellas are the main parrot here, but they aren’t always in as much evidence as they’ve been lately.

A group of five has been hanging about together, perching close by each other, if not all in the same tree. 

Three were quite enough for this young Red Cedar, especially as the recent shower was still weighing down its leaves. The others had to make do with the floppy vegie garden fence top.

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A few grey days later I spotted a group of birds silhouetted in the leafless Nashi tree. Hard to see just what sort of birds, but there were five…

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From a different aspect, with less contrasting backlighting, they were indeed the Rosella gang. I wonder where they’ll turn up next…

Taking turns

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As I rarely put bird seed in my makeshift feeder, the Crimson Rosellas just keep their eye on it.  As the weather gets colder, I notice the wallabies are eating plants they’d previously left alone when the growth of grass and preferred plants was lush. Feed is getting scarce.

This morning one Rosey landed on the empty feeder and looked at me — or so I thought — through the window in front of my desk. ‘OK, OK!’ I agreed, ‘It has been about a month’. So out I went to drop a handful of seed in.

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The Rosey had flown off to a very near bush as I did so, and then returned once I’d gone back in and shut the door. In a flash — or two flashes — it and a mate were tucking in. They were like two little clockwork birds, alternating the ducking down and the straightening up.

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But then a third Rosey arrived; great flurries and a re-arrangement. It seemed only two birds were allowed to feed at one time, and those two kept changing. 

One feeding bird would rush at the interloper, return to feed, while the outsider edged closer and closer until it was deemed a threat again.

The process would start again, but it seems there is a fair play system at work, and after a time the newcomer was permitted to feed.

Passersby?

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Heading outside late at night, I heard a telltale heavy rustle amongst the leaves of the Crepuscule rose that clmibs up one end of the verandah.

A guilty Brushtail Possum scrambled up under the rafters, hoping I couldn’t see it. Which I couldn’t, until I looked around the post — and used a torch. Unfair advantage, I know.

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Many people consider these critters cute; I don’t. They eat roses. And citrus.

One seems to hang about for a while and them move elsewhere. A brief stopover.

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My Nashi trees are dropping their yellowing leaves, which turn dark brown to black on the ground — if the wallabies don’t get to them first.

So it wasn’t surprising that a large black leaf had blown a little off course – at first distant sight. Too big as I drew closer…

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It was another creature I rarely see out and about, when it should be in the little dam downhill. A longnecked tortoise.

I’d found one near my clothesline a few days before and had put it back in what is really a large waterlily pond, thinking of the long distance to my other dam.

Clearly this tortoise was determined to leave home. This time I respected its instincts and let it be. Just passing by.

I hope it found its destination safely.

Python post

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It is always wise here to carry a torch when stumbling about outside at night. However I am usually looking down, not up.

The other night, it was merely out of the corner of my eye that the top of one verandah post looked different, amongst the labyrinth of twining vines and leaves that encase them.

Indeed it was different: decorated by a diamond python, who slowly curled up almost out of sight.

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Wrapped around itself into an extraordinarily tight bundle, that’s where it stayed all the next day, although as the day warmed up, the tin must have been too hot.

I assumed it had fed the night before and was quietly digesting. But I’d kept checking its whereabouts — just in case.

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Next evening the torch revealed that it was hungry again and on the hunt. Poised motionless, flexed ready to strike, above the erratically filled bird feeder, where small marsupials might come to nibble leftover grains.

Whether it was successful or not, I haven’t seen it since. But I still look, above the door for example, as I go outside at night!

Wildlife snapshot

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Arriving home in a rainshower, I of course took the opportunity to go outside when the sun reappeared for a brief spell and I heard some high ‘peep’ calls.

King Parrots in the Pittosporum. As soon as I got close, they took off into the Lemon Ti-Tree.

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Their tomato-red heads and fronts are almost unbelievably vivid, but when the young and the females turn their green backs and/or heads they can disappear.

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While I was photographing the Kingies, one of a group of lazing kangaroos was interested enough to prop and watch, so I snapped them too.

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Just then a bird flew overhead. It took a second for me to register a different shape … fat-bellied … then another flew over. The White-headed Pigeons were visiting again, and as I hadn’t seen them for some time, I was inordinately pleased!

There were five altogether, preening and cleaning, posing and perusing, in the branches of a grey gum near the house.

Soon the rain clouds drifted over again and sent me indoors. The sun had been out for perhaps just fifteen minutes, yet look what I’d seen!