Pardalote Holt: December 2014

Last day of the month and year, I better get my skates on and get the November post out! November followed the continuing theme of dry days although the weather was beginning to warm as we finally reached summer. The days were marginally longer (no long summer nights like you get back in the UK!) and the garden was looking very dry and very tired. The Grevilleas flowers were coming to an end and even the Bougainvilleas were beginning to run out of puff. The dams were almost a metre off their normal height and several of the lilies that were trying to flower had been beached. The Milfoil was doing its best to add a splash of sunny yellow along the margins of the Lap Swamp, but the back dam was still looking green and murky thanks to the Plumed Whistling Ducks. According to the weather people Queensland had received only a fraction of its normal annual rainfall and although we weren't suffering anything like those towns and properties in the west of the state the forest floor was very crackly and dry under foot.

With all the dry weather the strimmer (whipper-snipper in Australia) was gathering cobwebs in the shed and most of my attention was on keeping the chooks from dying of heat stroke. A couple of days were really hot, nudging past 40 degrees, but I've now learned how to manage the heat better. The pullets have a tarp shade tent over their run and I open all the coop doors and laying box lids and that allows what breeze there is to flow through the coops. The chicks in the nursery would be moved each day as the sun swung around the house. By late morning I'd move them from the nursery into a caged frame on a table on the back deck and then again in the afternoon to a second nursery in the now shaded back garden. I had to move the brooders of the really young ones indoors, into the air-conditioning, as the heat in the garage became stifling. In the end I still lost a couple of the younger pullets, but it could have been a lot worse. Despite all the heat the chooks kept laying and eventually I decided to stop putting eggs aside for the incubators with the full summer in sight as I would have had too many chicks indoors.

Another problem that reared its head was a rat infestation in my workshop. Monty the cat did his best to keep the numbers down, but eventually I had to turn to laying poison. I really didn't want to go down this path, especially as the danger of one of the cats or dogs eating a poisoned rat was real, but I carefully monitored the surrounds and picked up any carcasses before this could happen, and I think we've got the problem whipped for the time being.

Down on the dams the Purple Swamphens played a continual cycle of building new nest, mating, and then abandoning the nest and moving to a new site before starting the process again. I've been really hoping for a group of gangly moorhen chicks, but they are still at it now.


Nest number 3

At the end of the month we were treated to the arrival of a mother Pacific Black Duck and ten freshly minted ducklings, which have kept me engaged ever since.

Momma duck and her brood.

and of course, Nitesh the Peacock has continued to enthrall me.

Well it's time for the monthly bird count....

Regulars (seen at least 5 days in the week)

Australian Magpie

Bar-shouldered Dove
Bronzewing
Channel-billed Cuckoo

Channel-billed Cuckoo

Common Mynah
Double-barred Finch

Galah

Laughing Kookaburra
Little Corella

Little Friarbird
Magpie Lark
Noisy Friarbird
Noisy Miner

Olive-backed Oriole
Pacific Black Duck

Pacific Black Duck

Peaceful Dove

Pied Currawong
Plumed Whistling Duck
Purple Swamphen

Rainbow Lorikeet

Rainbow Lorikeets

Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Yellow-faced Honeyeater
Welcome Swallow
White-throated Gerygone
Wood Duck
Torresian Crow

Common (Seen at least twice a week)

Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike
Brown Honeyeater

Buff-banded Rail

Forest Kingfisher
Grey Shrike Thrush
King Parrot
Pale Headed Rosella

Pale-headed Rosella

Pied Butcherbird
Spangled Drongo

Variegated Fairy Wren

White-throated Honeyeater

White-throated Treecreeper

Uncommon (Seen two to five times during the month)

Blue-faced Honeyeater
Brown Cuckoo Dove
Cattle Egret
Cicadabird

The shy and secretive Cicadabird

Collared Sparrowhawk
Common Koel

Crested Pigeon
Dollarbird
Eastern Yellow Robin
Grey Butcherbird
Red-backed Fairy Wren
Scaly-breasted Lorikeet
Striated Pardalote
Wedge-tailed Eagle
White-headed Pigeon