Australian King Parrots

 

Photos from August 2019, not long after the move.

We see king parrots often, although it is less common for them to so close to the house -- all of these photos were taken standing on the verandah. Usually they're a bit further from the house and stay in or under the hedge which separates us from our neighbours.

There was also that one time in early September when I looked out the window and saw a small flock of king parrots perched on the jazz...

Eastern Spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris)

I was quite chuffed to get a couple in-focus snaps of the eastern spinebill honeyeater on the flowering quince. This is the time of year for us to see them from the house, with the quince and daphne in full bloom. They are small, quick-moving birds, and in the thick of the branches and blossoms this was the first time I was able to get a couple good photos. If you're wondering why the quince flowers look a little worse for wear, it's not because we've had particularly rough rainy or windy weather, but rather because the satin bowerbirds pick at the petals and eat them. And just as a bonus - one shot of a superb fairywren at the end, taken only moments after these other photos.

[Relocation to] Victoria

I wrote this post in December 2019 and just hadn’t quite gotten around to selecting and resizing all the photos to go with it to publish. Then there was Christmas, which was somewhat unnecessarily hectic, a few days off work trying to hasten through a much-larger-than-I-thought-it-was-going-to-be graphic design project I volunteered for, and then New Year’s Eve came, the day the Abbeyard/Mt Buffalo fires started. Fast-forward two evacuations and weeks on constant alert breathing air heavy with smoke, and a month recovering from it all. It was already an unusual start to the year, and this was before coronavirus became a worldwide pandemic and everything shut down.

Time has been strange these past couple months, and honestly I have not had much energy to write or take photos the way I normally enjoy. It is not just the pandemic as I have being feeling a bit out of alignment for this past year here. I had settled perhaps a bit deeper into Uralla than I had thought, and the move has been a difficult adjustment for me, perhaps moreso in that my work is still in Uralla and I can’t let go of the ties I hold there. There is a lot of uncertainty for the future, as my work there will likely come to an end in the next month or so.

So we press forward, one day at a time. I am trying to prioritise my health, wellbeing, and creativity, and hoping bit by bit to get back into the swing of things.

Kookaburra, July 2019. Dacelo novaeguineae. While we are used to hearing kookaburras every day,
now that we live outside of town there are certainly a lot more of them.

6 December 2019

We made the official move to Victoria in July and will have been here now nearly five months, which have flown by. Of course any kind of move has a number of chores which come along with it (whether changes of address, setting up new utilities, or just learning where to find certain things in new surrounds) and as we moved interstate there were a few extra tasks to undertake (new car rego, drivers licences, insurances). That all on top of getting used to the way of life south of the border and the unique VIC lingo (you’ll give yourself away coming from NSW if you order a midi instead of a pot!) And of course, I haven’t even mentioned the unpacking…

Coming from drought-stricken New England, it was a welcome change to see green paddocks and to have frequent rain during the spring, although the hills are already tinged with brown as the grass dries out as we head into the hot summer. We are renting an farmhouse on a cattle farm, about a 15 minute drive from the town of Bright and just five minutes from Mount Buffalo National Park. Being so close to the park is fantastic – hard to make an excuse not to go on a weekend when we want to take a walk or simply get out of the house when it’s so close.

A crimson rosella Platycercus elegans preens its feathers.

Being out of town, we have more birds in our backyard on a regular basis than we did in town in Uralla. There are an enormous amount of crimson rosellas which can be heard chirping all day long and I very much enjoy seeing the fairywrens hopping about, which were uncommon visitors in Uralla but quite regular here. It has also been fantastic to see all the new birds from a new area: grey fantails, scarlet robins, and more which have yet to be identified. The magpies and the currawongs have slightly different calls, as if they, too, have a Victorian accent to their northern cousins.

Scarlet robin, Petroica boodang.

Brown Thornbill (?) Acanthiza pusilla.

These amazingly tiny birds are incredibly fleeting, so difficult to capture!

The female satin bowerbird, Ptilonorhynchus violaceus. A bird I'd never seen before we moved
to VIC, now we see them nearly every day in large groups, hopping through the paddocks or
in the garden. Last summer they ate our capsicum plants, leaves and all.

Australian king parrots, Alisterus scapularis.

A male superb fairy wren, Malurus cyaneus.

The much less flamboyant female superb fairy wren.

My one and only sighting of an Eastern spinebill, Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris.

Scaret robin (Petroica boodang)

The striking (and adorable) scarlet robin, glimpsed from inside and photographed from the verandah, mid July 2020.

I only catch a glimpse of the male scarlet robin and his bright red plumage from time to time, as the robins are much more elusive and shy than the other birds I see every day. I have read that the territorial pairs move from forest habitats into open grasslands/pastures for the winter, which would explain why we have only seen them at our place during the coldest months.

This sighting brightened up my afternoon considerably, I wouldn't mind taking a break every day from work to photograph a passing bird or two!

Backyard parrots, January to March

 It has been a good summer for parrots in our (and our neighbour's) yard, with crimson and eastern rosellas, king parrots and finally just recently cockatoos stopping in to make an appearance. We only grew more sunflowers and cosmos than last year (while we knew they liked the sunflowers, the cosmos was a surprise) and with a pretty long flowering season, with the first volunteers up early and us being able to keep up with the garden, we have had parrots in the backyard pretty much every day for three months. Last year we covered our sunflowers so we could harvest the seeds, but this year gave free reign over to the birds for them to enjoy. It was especially entertaining to watch them eat the cosmos seeds. While the eastern rosellas would jump onto the plants, the crimson rosellas (who are just a tad larger) would usually just hop along the back fence and try to get the seeds without jumping onto the plants.

We only noticed the birds' visits to our neighbour's yard because some weeds on their side of the fence went to seed which the eastern especially enjoyed (and our cats enjoyed watching them, being close to our window.) There is also an apple tree next to the fence, which the crimson rosellas liked to eat. They'll be disappointed if they think there will be apples in our yard for them to eat when (hopefully) we have apples next year!

Crimson rosellas in the apple tree

Galahs overhead. Even though we see galahs every day, I have
never seen them venture inside the fence of our yard, sticking
to the grass on the far side of the fence next to the street.

Sitting on the green bean trellis

Eastern rosella, hiding in the cosmos

King parrot

Om nom nom

Our neighbour's apple tree (and this is why we will cover
our fruit trees next year when we have fruit...)

The apples have all fallen from the tree now but the birds are still coming to our yard for flower seeds, and now the Chinese pistachio tree seeds! This appeals to the bigger birds, king parrots and sulphur-crested cockatoos. It is really funny to step outside and hear the sound of many little beaks nibbling coming from the tree. Our second round of sunflowers have also recently started blooming, and the birds have been a bit impatient this time and haven't even waited for the flowers to open before they start to nibble on them.

Cockatoo eating the Chinese pistachio tree seeds

Either a juvenile king parrot or a female, the colors are similar
so it's hard for me to tell.