Housework thwarted for this morning: Outside the kitchen window
Joanne, were you once in Maplewood? (New coming on. Sorry if repeat question.) Love your discription!
Hi Victor! Welcome to the Aussie Annex!
Nope, never really been outside Australia apart from one short cruise...but I got to meet LL_ as a penfriend a few years before MOL began. Then someone made a comment in Soapbox All Political when we were holding elections, and clearly had no idea about the real way Aussie politics worked, so I joined up, leapt in, then found myself hooked... The Board looked very different in those days!!
I'm on the Gold Coast in Queensland. There are some other Aussies and New Zealanders on MOL, some living in the U.S. I really only know marksierra well, in fact for (gasp) 40-odd years. He's in another part of Australia, usually.
HAH! I think we need a new category called "The Aussie Annex," since people get confused by you on a regular basis. And while we are at it, we should create categories for other ex-pats, such as "The New England Annex" and "The California Annex," and even "The Florida Annex."
Perhaps I should post this in marksierra's Inconsequential Chat blog, as it's not outside my kitchen window nor about birds, but it caught my eye and made me smile. Hope it does the same for you!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-17/worlds-smallest-nation-host-earths-largest-land-animal/6401508
So I just walked to the kitchen sink, intending to wash some dishes and then start a casserole for much later today...it's warm and sunny, but with a breeze hinting at evening cool if we're lucky. (It's not quite lunchtime yet)
Two of the green lorrikeets quietly, gloriously satiated and in possession of the tree, allowing a bronze cuckoo to join them for a moment. One lorrikeet is quietly chirruping and delicately nibbling at the pear, dropping her head to her shoulder to look towards me then down to tray as she decides which morsel to chomp next. She dance-steps to the chunk of seedblock, backs to the clump of banana, sashays round to reach above the seeds to the pear, gobbles banana, bumps the cuckoo...is there some silent Bird Disco playing, that I can't hear?? The sun catches her colours makes them glow so brightly. I can't wait until I can post short videos of this!
Meanwhile, Mr Parrot is on my left, on a branch about my head height. He's doing this really weird little horn-pipe jig I've not seen before, constantly 'talking' to himself or her or me... He's bobbing up and down, leaning to one side, then balancing on one leg, fluffing and preening his chest feathers with a dreamy drunk look in his eye (beer goggles??). He leans really far forward so he almost topples then circles backward, bobs a bit, does a couple of pendulum-drunk circles then wanders up the branch, hops to a new branch, and starts again... Chattering, muttering all the while. There's a happy, full kind of not-quite-silence at the tree; I wonder if we will have a new round of nest building, even though it's almost winter??
I must put overripe fruit out more often!
Snort. Every time I tried to get a pic of the lorrikeet trio at the Banana Tapas Bar on the little table outside the French doors, they'd all fly away. When they came back, they'd munch a bit then peer in the glass as if saying hi, inviting us to join them... Maybe I'll get lucky tomorrow.
Also visiting today: silver-eyes, a plover, ginormous magpie or butcher bird, and a couple of big currawong.
I love your description of the bird disco! I can just picture it. It's too bad you have to shoot photos through the screen. I would love to get a clear view of these dancers.
The elephant story is very sweet. I hope she continues to do well and doesn't mind her quarantine too much!
Yeah, me too. I was hoping the clean windows would but now the shininess gets in the way: either the morning angles aren't right for a clear puc or the birds will see me and fly away, mocking as they go.
I'm trying to set up a little hide under the dining table, from where I can spy on the Tapas Bar. Perhaps if there's enough sugar, they won't be quite so skittish.
I hadn't realised until listening to Tim Low that your birds don't behave in this way as a routine, that your birds are quite sedate and fairly quiet (their songs are very ordered and purposeful, and there are long quiet times between noisy bits). Our birds don't always squawk, but they'll usually chatter and it will be nonstop while they're awake even if they're lonely birds.
Yeah, there isn't much raucous about our birds. Although I do enjoy listening for their individual calls or songs. This morning a bright male cardinal was sitting on top of one of the feeders uttering loud "chip! chip! chip!" sounds. I love it when I heard the wood thrushes or wrens, who sing beautifully. And I get very excited when I hear owls!
When we can post other kinds of files, I'll get small clips of local birds (if next-door's dog isn't yowling). There's a lot of melody and tune in our bird calls, it's just that when Europeans first came here they missed the musicality they knew and no one had invented jazz or syncopation, and they didn't understand different musical scales (they couldn't even hear the beauty in Asian music).
Around me now I'm hearing quiet trills, back-and-forth tweet and chirp musical runs you could use as your phone alerts, a couple of light 'whip' calls, magpie and sparrow chatter about food, I think there's some water fowl flying around ( it's still earlyish and no one is really moving so waterfowl are moving between roost and the nearby beaches and mangroves).
The really raucous wake-up calls were about an hour ago, as the sun came up and the flocks got moving.
Did you know your orioles originated here?
No, I had no idea about the orioles. Then why do we call them Baltimore Orioles, and how did they get here?
Listen to the Tim Low podcast, if you can, (linked above - marksierra will probably point out it's not possible but there may be a transcript) or grab that book of his. There's apparently a whole stack of research now that proves songbirds started here, then migrated up north. Genetically they can show the paths the orioles took. 
Here you go: sample paper of the research (not Low's):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2010.06167.x/asset/j.1600-0587.2010.06167.x.pdf;jsessionid=EDC59CC36E55BB3475D61E135D4E0022.f02t01?v=1&t=i8no8nna&s=b438e8f11c5a5a6b4bca9fa5faa97ea28575989f
joanne said:
Listen to the Tim Low podcast, if you can, (linked above - marksierra will probably point out it's not possible but there may be a transcript) ...
The podcasts are designed to be listened-to anywhere in the world.
If you can't get it/them to play, give joanne or me a shout and we'll see what can be arranged.
Clever you! I knew you'd surface eventually!
This was a great Conversation. I heard it this week, so was surprised it was apparently first played last July. I usually hear them first time.
I thought this might be a good shot to hold over while you work out how to get your local population to stay still while they have their portraits taken.
The link has the larger version of the image -
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-18/a-pair-of-rainbow-lorikeets-preen-on-a-tree-branch/6403522
So I crept out to hang up the washing 30mins ago, trying not to disturb our avian visitors. Heard some beautiful singing and looked up: on the branch opposite the seedblock and facing towards it was a happy, serenading kookaburra. In the feeding tray were big, bright green rainbow lorrikeets alternating between the fallen seed there and the honey-glued block. Above their heads, and on the ground below were three huge and perfect back and white magpies, one of which returned the kookaburra's song.
So peaceful, so calm and so restful. And I didn't disturb them at all.
A couple of hours ago we were visited by what I know as pippis or peewees - not the shellfish! This is a waterfowl, sorta like a cross between a plover and a kind of fat short seagull only happy. They spend their calling 'pippi! Pippi!' Some early sailors and settlers heard it as 'pee-wee! Pee-wee!' So the name stuck. Not sure what the Murri/Koori call the bird.
It has a delicate and pretty scalloping of grey feathers in a deep collar around its neck, and the rest of the plumage is various shades of grey, so to an unpractised eye it can be hard to see all the markings. The sun hit in all the right places to highlight the jewellery, though, and it was a real treat.
I've just some super mushy honeydew melon for the Tapas bar and the feeding tray. While I was carefully preparing the fruit, one older lorrikeet climbed higher on the Disco branch and peered in the window, daring me to make eye contact.
He was soon joined by the two from the seed blocked, who carefully primped then turned to face me, all three like a judges' panel from MasterChef or something... Heads to one side, pondering, then swivelling around, walking away a little to confer, looking over their shoulders, pretending not to know what's going on... Three minutes later you can't prise them away from either feeding station! They're so funny!
A handy field guide to what I see, daily.
http://birdsqueensland.org.au/downloads/qld_birds_select_brochure.pdf
10, 13, 14, 15, 33 and 34 basically 'come to work' around 6am and hang around as long as there's daylight.
70, 71, 72 fly in and throw their weight about then fly out.
42 and 50 just like hanging around pretending they're not as flashy as they really are. Their calls are really beautiful.
The poster doesn't have the cutest little soft-brown finch-wren thingies we saw this morning in a client's front hedge... They looked a bit like willy-wagtails except the colour was wrong and they were up too high. And I can't see the cheeky, puffy pelicans that roost on top of the street lights just down the road...
The crested pigeons (number 10 on that poster linked to above) come in various shades of grey, I seem to have mostly darker ones around here, with soft charcoal effects highlighting their wings. Very pretty if you really look. A small group tend to look a bit like abandoned showgirls in tattered costumes, down on their luck...
So I'm sitting here at 6.30am (a few minutes ago) sipping that first rich hot coffee for the day and glance over to the kitchen window. OMG, I swear it's like a grey football with a tail has sprouted feet and is waddling down to the seedblock!!! The fattest biggest crested pigeon I have ever seen, looking like a really tired blowsy retired showgirl, has just arrived. It's a wonder the block didn't fall off the branch!
A fat pigeon, eh? It'd go nicely gently roasted with some root vegetables and served with a fresh garden salad.
Used to hate waking up to 50 or so of these things in my yard when I lived in CA. They were even worse outside of my office. Hundreds of these things constantly fighting and squawking for branch space. I'll take a pigeon any day.
Greenies? They're harmless! They're just chattering about weather, predators, and whose got the sugar! Literally. They're similar to my rainbow lorrikeets, and three of them can sound like an army. Throw in some corellas or cockatoo or gulls, and it's like living in the middle of a Hitchcock movie soundtrack...
But once they get the hierarchy sorted, and everyone gets a chance at the sugar, it's fine. We've just had the morning flyover (sun-up is later these days), so 20 to 30 minutes of pandemonium and avian news reporting but now it's pretty much silent apart from single visitors from one roost to another.
Now it's cooler and a bit winter you down south, some of marksierra's birds have moved up this way for a bit. So this morning I'm hearing a new rich magpie song, and a couple of Victorian birds I've forgotten. Ah. The kookaburra's is warming up his throat too, we may get something from him after breakfast. (He's been away the last couple of weeks, since the big rain. I think the nearby wetlands seduced him)
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Part of why I want to share the video is because of this podcast
Url http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/06/24/4031932.htm
Tim Low has written a book, Where Song Began, which discusses the history and development of songbirds on every continent. He also talks about our native birds and their sugar behaviour: more like a bunch of sugar-addicted teenagers or mildly drunk yobbos, really. It's fun to listen to, the podcast.