Wild Things

Kanga & kids

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The kangaroo families now graze around my house fence as regularly as the wallabies do. This helps keep my firebreak cropped short, as well as affording me front row viewing seats.

This mum had two joeys, one almost a teenager and one a toddler, barely able to squeeze back into the pouch if need be, and still drinking from Mum as well as grazing.

For a week or so I’d been watching him lurching and crashing about as he gradually spent more time on his own two very large and bumbling feet.

But all that hopping is awfully tiring, and while the bigger joey fed on, mother and child lay down for an afternoon nap right next to my fence.

Country Viewpoint: Swallows

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My next Country Viewpoint, Swallows, will go to air  on ABC Radio National next Monday 10th November (ABC Radio National Bush Telegraph, 11am-12noon Australian Eastern Daylight time: Country Viewpoint airs at 11.55).

Bush Telegraph is also available as a podcast.

Echidna rush

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In one week I have been visited by three echidnas, two of them at the same time.

From the orchard I saw what looked like a small dark wombat moving up the slope just outside the fence. Drawing closer, it proved to be the biggest echidna I’ve seen on my place. Its spines were darker at their bases, so less obvious, and at first I thought it had few, like a young one. But this fellow was a veteran.

As I ran to the house to get the camera, a movement within the yard, just above the orchard, caught my eye.

There was another echidna, lighter coloured and smaller! This cute one was doing the rounds of the inside of my house fence, poking its snout, or beak, into the ground as it went. A female?

And then a few days later, from the kitchen window I saw one lumbering towards my yard gate.

It wasn’t as big as the first one, but was darker than the second. As it crossed the track, because it was walking on bare dirt, I got a better look at its feet and powerful digging claws, especially the extended rear one, used for scratching their fur amongst the spines.

Then it climbed an upturned tree root and began poking about in the hard clay. Look at the bristling power and fabulous arrangement of those spines!

I am fascinated by these strange egglaying mammals, or monotremes. How lucky to be able to have them just drop by, to share their habitat.

Sad saga of the swallow babies

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Just before I went away for a few days this week, I photographed the swallow babies again.

Three were clearly visible, two in the nest and one on the rafter. I suspect the latter was the the same baby who has been the boldest ever since birth. I looked from all angles but could not see the fourth.

And then I did, but not by looking up. Down on the verandah, amidst all the droppings, was a bedraggled smudge of feathers: the fourth nestling. It must have fallen.

I consoled myself – and the parents – with the thought that three out of four wasn’t bad, given all the problems of feeding and squeezing into the nest and avoiding predators.

But now I am back, only three days later, and in the nest I can see two babies, fluffed up against the breeze, looking very fat and healthy, much more developed and alert. I can only see one parent bird at a time, looking much thinner and stressed, as you’d expect, keeping up with such growth.

Yet I see no sign of the third baby — up or down. No little body on the verandah. Have they smothered it in the nest?

All the next day I have waited for a parent to return, to perch on the fairy lights as usual. Perhaps I missed a quick visit, but all has been quiet out there too — no twittering.

And then I can see only one bird up there, and I guess that the parents have been staying away to make them leave the nest.

This is not how I have seen them do it before, when they perched in view and called, encouraging their young to join them. I could then watch the learning-to-fly sessions.

This time it feels like abandonment; I can’t see a swallow, young or old, anywhere aerially about.

An hour later, and I have missed the moment when the last nestling set off on its own.

This is truly ’empty nest’ syndrome. But only until next year.

Stop press: they’re coming out of the nest!

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A few days ago I noticed that the swallow babies had their eyes open, but as they were still mostly hunkering down inside the nest, I could see little of their bodies.

On the warm days, with my door wide open, the parents were coming inside more often, no doubt as the demand for food increased. There’d be flies and plenty of spiders, if they fancied them, amongst the cobwebs on my rafters.

Then just today, I spotted one baby outside the nest, sitting on the rafter. Understandably, as the nest is starting to look quite befouled, and given the size of this bold baby, must also be quite crowded.

As the others stretched and perched higher, I could see that the adult feathers were begining to show though the baby fluff, and the tip of the beak is now dark!

Swallow quads

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Finally it was evident that there were four baby swallows after all.

Their fluffy heads were showing above the nest most of the time: eyes still closed, white-lipped beaks shut tight until a parent appeared.

They look quite comical; I suspect because they resemble the old blackface makeup of the Al Jolson era.

Then they snap their beaks open and show the yellow-orange interior for a long period, blindly hoping food will be placed in there.

The adult’s beak is black-rimmed, so it will be interesting to see just when the colour changes.

As the parent opened its own beak, I saw that the inside of its mouth is also orange, which I hadn’t realised.

Still no sound from the babies, but the parents chatter a lot, so I guess they’re silently learning, taking it in as babies do.

Miniature frog

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In my rainforest nursery shadehouse the sprinklers come on automatically, keeping it cool and wet and green. Naturally frogs love it.

Snakes like frogs, so as the snake season heats up, I was tidying up in there.

Snake-covering grass and weeds had grown up in between the foam boxes filled with recycled milk carton ‘pots’, uniting the varied seedling trees with a green drapery.

Having been rather neglected this past year, some seedlings had grown right through the bases of the boxes and had to be dug out and planted down in the regenerating gullies at once. Others had to be repotted into fresh milk cartons.

Sorting through one matted box, I spotted this tiny inhabitant. Its colour fitted right in for camouflage, but not its texture: a glistening greenish-brown, mottled in some lights, with distinctly bright green sides and cream cheek stripes.

It wasn’t disposed to move, even as my sorting brought me closer, so I gently tipped its home seedling towards a box that I wouldn’t be touching for a day or so.

I think it could be a Blue Mountains Tree Frog, which has been found here (even though it’s not the Blue Mountains).

There is something very appealing about miniature creatures like this, so perfect in itself, and in its own little world.

Bringing up babies

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My Welcome Swallows seemed to have finished nest-building and were spending time sitting on what I assumed were their eggs.

Last week I found half of a tiny white eggshell on the verandah, and I feared a furred or feathered predator had robbed the nest and eaten the contents.

Then I noticed the mother was making poking actions when she returned to the nest. Since she was no longer nestbuilding, I guessed she was feeding babies, but could see nothing.

Five days later the first baby’s head appeared above the mud rim. Well, not much head was visible beyond the pointed white beak edging a very large and constantly agape mouth, bright orange-yellow inside. I thought I could see a faint halo of grey fluff on top of the head.

An odd large feather, perhaps part of the nest lining, was sticking up confusingly, but I doubt it is attached to a baby.

Then I spotted two or perhaps three more little heads, crammed in on the far side of the nest, their pink naked throats upthrust, beaks closed. They didn’t appear to open their beaks as much as brother greedy on the right; perhaps he was first to hatch and therefore boss.

No sounds yet; no squeaking or squawking, just a silent perpetual demand.

Welcome Swallows

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A pair of Welcome Swallows has turned up for the annual nesting adventure.  They took a few weeks to decide just where, but as usual, they have chosen poorly.

They’ve begun their mud dab nest on a rafter of my unlined verandah roof, up against the mud wall. It’s good adhesion, but bad positioning.

Far too close to the tin so it will be far too hot for the baby birds as the weather heats up. I’ll have to get up on the roof and weigh down a piece of plywood or something to give them some extra insulation.

The extensive verandah strings of fairy lights are providing them with circus type swings, from which they can more widely spatter their white and black droppings.

Sandals especially must now be checked first before allowing bare feet to make contact.

I do like these handsome little swallows and I look forward to the nestling stage, now that they didn’t choose to nest outside my bedroom window!

Mighty roo boys

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Through the mist-swathed forest I saw three large dark rounded shapes, like rocks that were slowly moving.

As they grazed down the hill towards my gate, they suddenly sat up, erect  and on the alert.

They were unmistakably kangaroos, male Eastern Greys, the biggest native animals on my wildife refuge.

Strong featured, broad-chested, well-muscled, with powerful back legs and a tail to match.

I admire these grand animals, and I love the fact that they rule here — and that they let me watch from my verandah!

My redneck neighbours

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The perimeter of my house yard fence is patrolled by small groups of Eastern rednecked wallabies. From my verandah I watch them nibble their way along the fence, stopping for a sunbake or a scratch, as this fellow is doing.


Older joeys like this one are still carried in the mother’s pouch, and still drinking from her, but when she leans down to graze, it has a munch as well. Free rides and free lunch!

Rosemary rosellas

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Woody narrow-leaved Mediterranean shrubs like rosemary are happy in drier and poorer soils, and grow well from cuttings.

Hence I have poked rosemary bushes into the least fertile places in my yard, such as the clay patches by the track.

And just look how they repay me! Pale blue blossoms absolutely festoon the branches in winter.

Bees love them. So, it seems, do the crimson rosellas, at least on this occasion.

I’m not sure what they would have been eating on the rosemary, but their richly-coloured plumage was such a contrast that they made the bushes appear snowy.

They have’t been back since, but then so many of the special sights here are only fleetingly fabulous.