Housework thwarted for this morning: Outside the kitchen window

Outside my kitchen window is a very very old, scraggy callistemon tree (bottle brush tree). It's the daytime roost for several parrots of different kinds: lorikeets, rosellas, some magpies and butcher birds, kookaburra, a couple of Indian mynahs fly in and so some shrike pigeons... Today is slightly overcast, as the heavy storm and of the past 3 days moves on. The air is warm but not oppressive.

I found a squishy peach in the fridge, chopped it up for the nectar-seeking birds and scattered on some branches. There's also a large seed block hanging off a sturdy twig.

I keep my plastic buckets by the garden tap (faucet?) under the window. I was going to grab one so I could wash the floors - and stopped when I saw the tree. No floor washing for a couple of hours.

At least 6 pairs of deep-green rainbow lorikeets snuggling side-by-side, grooming each other and settling down for a snooze. As they snuggle and shelter together, they form a heart shape. So peaceful, so calm, so sweet. Hardly any chattering or calling, just stillness.

Taking a pic would be too disruptive.

What sweet story, floors can wait.

Very lovely description Joanne. I feel like standing by your window with you.

Great story, Joanne. It's so easy for so many of us to fail to notice the beautiful details around us, too pre-occupied with the day's "to do" list. Your floor will not be any worse for wear if it waits another day to be cleaned oh oh .

It doesn't even take that much for my housework to get thwarted, @joanne! LOL!

Hah! Part 2!

It's mid-afternoon. Decided I really should hang up few items of clothes washing before it starts to rain again. We use sunshine and fresh air to dry our laundry; when it's wet or overcast, we use a freestanding camping hoist next to our backdoor, under the patio roof. The patio roof covers half the width of the patio, and the rest has a kind of overhead open-air trestling effect over the brickwork.

So I'm out there, hanging a couple of D's tee-shirts on hangers that dangle from S-hooks, and pegging 'smalls' on the line...to the constant chirping and chittering of the two kookas perched on the edge of the open work trellising. It's unusual for them to hang around so close to people, in the middle of the day. They're meat-eaters, always seeking little worms and insects to gulp down. So it's like they're asking me for some treats too, please, missus.

I'm about to go check the fridge when I realise one has a big chunk of dead cicada or something dangling from his beak, and the other one is insisting, begging for a scrap. First one is totally ignoring his mate. D said he's never seen such concentration!

It feels like I'm right there next to you, Jo. Please keep posting. Housework can ALWAYS wait!

Ina, I live on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. My profile has a link for the weather site at our location (or it did).
oh oh
Nice and sunny today, very very hot and humid. Not many antics to report today, just bird acrobatics as they fight over the remains of the seed block. At late morning, it's 'only' mid-30s (that's mid-90s to you), peak temp will be in around 3 hours.

Yesterday was steamy but fine; migraine weather. The seed block was running down but my pay hadn't come in yet so I didn't feel up to battling the crowds just so the birds would be happy (how do they know what of the week it is??).
I'm standing at the sink after lunch, washing a plate, and there's the little kooka looking all hot and bothered on the edge of the bird-feeder dish hanging from the tree. The dish has the last clumps of the seed block in it, and the little kooka looks at the clumps with no energy, clearly hoping for something else. Doesn't even have the energy to whistle, it's so hot.

I know how that feels. I couldn't be bothered making lunch; I'd sent D out for Subway. I take pity on the teeny thing, and spread a tablespoon of juicy fresh mince (hamburger?) on feeder dish. (The kooka is wary of people but doesn't have to go too far, it's flown up a couple of branches and turned its back to me so I can't see it)

Kooka is so grateful for the morsels of meat, it does a little dance around each beakful as it grabs and swallows it. It doesn't guzzle and it leaves lots for others, but we enjoy each other's company for around 10mins before I have to sit down.

Early this morning (around dawn) I notice large butcher birds have visited the feeder dish, probably finishing off the scraps of meat. They dance along higher branches sharpening their beaks like chefs sharpen their knives, looking for little grubs crawling in the cracks of bark.

When I go to snip some parsley and basil for a tomato salad for D, I'm startled to see something bobbing on the window sill, out of the corner of my eye. :-D it's Little Kooka, looking in the window to say 'g'day missus, got some brekky, please?'.

I would love to see some pictures, Joanne.

Sadly, the fly screen means I can't really clear pics, and the orientation is a bit twisted!
This is a pic of two of the rainbow lorikeets on the bird-feeder, about a month ago. I'll see what else I can grab without disturbing them - I may even learn how to edit/crop the pictures!

Thank you, Joanne. It gives me a hint of what it must be like down there. I had a green parakeet when I was a kid, the same color as the birds outside your window. It must be fun, albeit noisy, having them out there. Happy New Year to you, and the birdies.

Lovely, @joanne! Thank you!

Google and wikipedia will show you their tummies - all brilliant colours, currently glowing in the rising morning light. The seedblok in the pic is new, like the one hanging in the same position now. I haven't checked it yet, but I'll be surprised if it's still there after all the rain from midnight until now...the dish will be overflowing so the seed will have swollen and most will have fallen to the ground.

We don't often have them around all day if it's wet. That means I might be able to wash the window for you, and also to replace the seedblock if the rain stops.

Wow. Bird watching instead of housework. Now, THAT's a plan. smile

Love your descriptions, BTW. Lovely writing, really puts you into the scene.

I've been lucky enough to get a pic of a brightly coloured pale-headed rosella on the seed block. Unfortunately, it's not a great pic!

These are really shy parrots, not very common around here now as their habitat is shrinking. The bright yellow bit is his head, bent down to pick and dig into the seeds so you can't see his eyes or his hooked pale beak. Back is blue. The red dot is under his rump, just before the underside of the tail begins. The tail feathers are startling iridescent blue, purple, green mixed with grey and maybe a bit of white. (Now replaced with an evening pic that is a little clearer)

If you didn't know, you'd think it was a huge budgie of some kind. But the pattern of feathers and colours and body shape clearly shows its a rosella but a lesser recognised variety. He's nearly as long as my forearm now, tip to tail.



Joanne, thank you for the marvelous mental pictures, and, now, the actual ones. We had a pair of Edwards Lorrikeets and I often miss them. They were such clowns. Edwards are a subspecies of the Rainbows, the main difference being that their heads are more grey than blue.

And Peggy is right. "Love your descriptions, BTW. Lovely writing, really puts you into the scene."

It absolutely does.


Here's a video clip so everyone can see more clearly what they look like and their relative sizes. The corellas are called bare-eyed cockatoos here in the States.

Joanne, I'm so envious that you have them right outside your window!

http://youtu.be/Hg7v2A6H53w

joanne-I am so happy you choose MOL to be your American family.....what magnificent descriptions and pics....thank you so much!! xoxoxo beege

I join Metaphysician in envy... it must be wonderful to have all those colors going on outside! But you probably take it for granted, when to us it seems so exotic. It's nice to have a touch of the tropical when we are at the start of our real winter.

Meta - thank you for the clip!! I hadn't realised how dark that pic of the rosella is (I'm seeing it now on my desktop not the ipad, which took the pic). I'll try for another this weekend.

My kookas aren't as fluffy or as white as the one above - where the white is is a bit grey. I figure it's an individual or regional difference. Behaviour and call is certainly kookaburra. At first I wasn't sure, but we do have families of them sitting on power wires hereabouts so I just quietly observed to confirm. (Yep, we still have poles and wires for phones and power in many of our older and more established neighbourhoods. Newer developments tend not to)

I didn't grow up with this kind of colour: Melbourne has different birds, mostly browns and grey. And there are galahs (grey and pink). marksierra can tell you about them, although he's much more into possums, which are different to yours. Neighbours down the street from us had free-range peafowl: they'd honk and would fly over the fences, landing on our washing line fouling our laundry. Mum couldn't decide if it was worth the joy of an occasional dropped tail feather and the casually dropped conversational line 'as I was shooing the peacock up the street...' er, yeah!!! And our next-doors had a long, ramshackle chicken coop with a small flock of white chooks that gave beautiful eggs but pecked my toes. But that was all back in the '60s.

Meta, we have cockatoos here too - stripping the tops of trees and looking like someone has TPd the parks and the sides of roads. They're usually the ordinary sulphur-crested variety, as well as the corellas. Never just one or two, always massive flocks, a bit like you'd find families of gulls.

Just down the road from here is a locality known as Land's End. Used to be a great fishing spot until it got to be overdeveloped; the Coomera River meets the Broadwater and then the water moves around a couple of bigger sand dunes, past Wavebreak Island and on to open water. (It's quite exhilarating to sail past there; I used to volunteer for an all-abilities sailing group) What's truly magical there is the large numbers of pelicans that just hang about. On the street lamps. I mean ON the street lamps, as their high perches; just casually, majestically looking about and maybe thinking to look down as if we're worms or inedible fish. I'll try to get one of those this weekend too.

I love this thread - thank you, @joanne!

You know, you're all 'motivating' me to wash my windows!
On the same wall and to the observer's left of the kitchen window is a sliding door/tall window with a mini or fake patio (maybe one chair's width). When we moved I placed a small table and two chairs there, thinking we might actually enjoy a bit of garden (it's too hot there and too many midges). There's an empty pottery feeder dish on the table and if it rains, the dish turns into a birdbath.

The smaller magpies and the kookas like to drink there. So I've pulled up the blinds to try to take a pic from inside, one day. Of course that now means the dining table has to be tidy instead of a dumping ground...


Stupid autocorrect!

OMG! Is this the fattest pigeon you've ever seen in your life??? At first I wasn't even sure it was a pigeon! (Yeah, it was dancing along the top of the fence with a partner, and they're both pigeons) sorry about the size of the pics. They're both the same bird. You can just see the grey blob in the middle left, in the second pic.

joanne said:

Meta - thank you for the clip!! I hadn't realised how dark that pic of the rosella is (I'm seeing it now on my desktop not the ipad, which took the pic). I'll try for another this weekend.

My kookas aren't as fluffy or as white as the one above - where the white is is a bit grey. I figure it's an individual or regional difference. Behaviour and call is certainly kookaburra. At first I wasn't sure, but we do have families of them sitting on power wires hereabouts so I just quietly observed to confirm. (Yep, we still have poles and wires for phones and power in many of our older and more established neighbourhoods. Newer developments tend not to)

I didn't grow up with this kind of colour: Melbourne has different birds, mostly browns and grey. And there are galahs (grey and pink). marksierra can tell you about them, although he's much more into possums, which are different to yours...

Mark and I struck a deal a while back: If we can create a wormhole (without destroying the planet), he'll send a flock of pink galahs through. I can turn around and sell them here for $2500 a head (where they're known as rose breasted cockatoos) split the proceeds with him and use my half to pay off our mortgage.


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