Mid-winter and the drought begins to bite.

It's been a bit of an odd winter, dry still, very dry and by August SE Queensland had been designated in drought along with most of the rest of the state, but that's not unusual. What was less usual was the amount of warmer, windy days.  Whether this has had any affect on the birds or whether it is something else, but the variety of species is down; having said that if you sit on the deck and look out over the dam the number of birds appears up.

The Plumed Whistling Duck colony has been having a seriously detrimental effect upon the dam and the clear waters have now turned into a muddy pool. Most of the Featherweed, that in previous years I've had to pull out myself, has been eaten, and the dam walls have lost most of their grass.  I could try and reduce their numbers by not feeding them, but they are such attractive ducks. Plumed Whistling Ducks are quite common and I think they are a very interesting bird. Male and female are virtually indistinguishable apart from a very small size difference, although it is said that if you grab them by the legs and hang them upside down the drake will quack and the duck will hiss (readers should not try this at home). They are nocturnal and so most nights they fly off to the nearby farms to feed on grass, before returning to the Holt for a late breakfast. The rest of the day is spent preening, sunbathing or just hanging about and chatting with the neighbours.  The ducks nest in rudimentary scrapes on the ground with males and females sharing sitting duties. Little appears to be known about their mating habits, because it's performed in the dark.

Plumed Whistling Duck on the dam

The dry weather has become a real issue. The earth and soil, poor as it is anyway, is bone dry and even the more resilient plants are beginning to show the effects of the drought. I'm using up water from the tanks to keep the garden beds going, but the natives just have to look after themselves. Having said that the Grevilleas are putting on a show of flowers, which is bringing in the smaller birds, especially the Honeyeaters.

Blue-faced Honeyeaters

Although this is the largest of the honeyeaters, as big as a Mistle Thrush back in the UK.

With the dry weather the grass is much less appealing, so we're seeing a lot more Wallabies and they're coming up very close to the house...up to the back deck in fact.  Very skittish, but I think that they're beginning to get used to us.

Peek-a-boo, I see you.

And on to the birds...

Regulars (Seen at least x5 per week)

Australian Magpie

Australian Magpie interested in the camera.

Bar-shouldered Dove
Bronzewing
Dusky Moorhen
Eastern Spinebill
Galah
Golden Whistler

Male Golden Whistler

Grey Fantail
Magpie Lark
Pacific Black Duck

Pacific Black Duck shares the bird feeder with a Pale-headed Rosella

Pied Currawong

Pied Currawong

Plumed Whistling Duck
Purple Swamphen
Rainbow Lorikeet
Striated Pardalote

Striated Pardalote

Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Torresian Crow
Welcome Swallow

Welcome Swallows enjoying the sun at the tip of the old gum tree.

Yellow-faced Honeyeater

Common (Seen at least x2 per week)

Laughing Kookaburra

Laughing Kookaburras lining up for the evening joke fest.

Lewin's Honeyeater
Mallard
Noisy Friarbird
Noisy Miner
Peaceful Dove
Rainbow Bee Eater
Rose Robin

Male Rose Robin

Rufous Whistler
Silvereye

Silvereye

White-throated Gerygone
Wood Duck
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo


Uncommon (Seen 2-5 times per month)

Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike
Brown Cuckoo Dove
Brown Honeyeater
Double-barred Finch
Eastern Yellow Robin

Pair of Eastern Yellow Robins

Grey Butcherbird
Grey Shrike Thrush
King Parrot

Male King Parrot stretching for a seed pod.

Pale-headed Rosella
Pied Butcherbird

Pied Butcherbirds in full song.

Wedge-tailed Eagle
White-bellied Cuckoo Shrike
White-faced Heron
White-throated Treecreeper

White-throated Treecreeper...tree creeping!

Rare (Seen only once in the month)

Blue-faced Honeyeater
Brown Quail

The very shy Brown Quail

Satin Flycatcher

Satin Flycatcher

Spangled Drongo
Spotted Turtle Dove
Variegated Fairy Wren
White-throated Honeyeater

White-throated Honeyeater

Willie Wagtail

Which is 52-species, which is 4 below last July, reduced numbers of species are now becoming a worrying trend, but looking out across the grounds the numbers of birds, if not species, appears up.

Winter arrives and the world gets even drier.

All-in-all it was an odd month; very dry with only one very light shower over the whole month and a lot of windy days. I had a bit of a disaster when both of my camera lens gave up the ghost, but it did give me an excuse to upgrade to a 70-300mm lens, which is fantasadobi! (Not that it's made my camera work any better.

I lost a pullet to a Grey Goshawk early on in the month. My fellow chook breeders all started discussing how to kill the raptor when I mentioned this, and were somewhat aghast when I announced that I had no intention of killing such a beautiful bird of prey, however, something had to be done. The Goshawk stayed around for a couple of days and I made sure that he was aware that I was out and about, and despite giving the pullets a few more scares he was unsuccessful. Whilst he was missing, I was watching his tactics and it soon became obvious there was only one direction that he could really attack from and so a simple solution presented itself. I put up a 4m x 3m square white bird net, the sort of thing you protect your vegies with, as a panel blocking his attack vector.  It has worked superbly so far. As a net it hasn't been to affected by the winds, and we've had some strong ones since, and it's visible enough to put most birds off.

Anti-hawk net

A few birds have accidentally flown into it, having been startled by something, but they've just slid down the net and taken off again apparently with nothing more than a few ruffled feathers. Success!

In a fit of enthusiasm I've started erecting nesting boxes. Not as simple as back in the UK, you need to get them a lot further up the tree, and gum trees have less branches to fix them to, but after a while spent precariously balancing on my 5m ladder I eventually achieved the aim. Now we wait until Spring to see if anyone takes any notice of them

With a larger hole I'm hoping a pair of Parrots may take a shine to this one.

Nice view from the box, overlooking the dam.

On the chook front we finally got some Blue Faverolle chicks. We lost our Blue Faverolle cock to the heat earlier in the year and had to wait until the Splash cocks matured enough, but finally we have success.

Louis & Napoleon our Splash Faverolle cocks.

Blue Faverolle chicks making sure I've got the heat right.

And so, on to the birds...

Regulars (Seen at least x5 per week)

Australian Magpie
Bar-shouldered Dove

Bar-Shouldered Dove stepping out on the drive.

Bronzewing

female Common Bronzewing

Double-barred Finch
Dusky Moorhen
Eastern Spinebill

Eastern Spinebill feeding on the Pineapple Sage

Galah
Grey Fantail

Grey Fantail

Mallard

Monty Mallard on the bird table

Pacific Black Duck
Pied Currawong
Plumed Whistling Duck

Purple Swamphen

Purple Swamphen

Rainbow Lorikeet
Striated Pardalote
Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Torresian Crow
Yellow-faced Honeyeater

Common (Seen at least x2 per week)


Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike
Brown Honeyeater
Grey Butcherbird
Grey Shrike Thrush
Laughing Kookaburra

Laughing Kookaburra

Lewin's Honeyeater
Noisy Miner
Rainbow Bee Eater
Welcome Swallow
White-throated Gerygone
Wood Duck
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo


Uncommon (Seen 2-5 times per month)

Golden Whistler
Grey Goshawk
Magpie Lark
Noisy Friarbird
Olive-backed Oriole
Pale-headed Rosella
Peaceful Dove
Rose Robin

Rose Robin

Rufous Whistler
Silvereye

Silvereye in a Wattle

Varied Sitella
Wedge-tailed Eagle
White-bellied Cuckoo Shrike
White-eyed Duck

White-eyed Duck (Hardhead) surrounded by a flotilla of Plumed Whistling Duck and a lone Pacific Black Duck

White-throated Treecreeper
Willie Wagtail
Yellow-rumped Thornbill

Rare (Seen only once in the month)

Blue-faced Honeyeater
Brown Goshawk
Figbird
Little Corella
Pale-headed Rosella
Spangled Drongo
Tawny Frogmouth


Which is 53-species, which is 10 below last June.  The number surprised me as there seemed to be a lot of birds around, especially the smaller species, but I'm confident the spread will improve.

The merry month of May comes round again

I was looking back at last May's blog and the monthly numbers are very similar, 56-species in 2013 and 57-species this year. With that in mind one would expect the bird species to be very similar, but whilst there are some regular seasonal trends such as the re-appearance of the Easter Spinebills, there are a few oddities.  The continuing rise of the Plumed Whistling Duck numbers continues, up to 134 at last count, and the Dusky Moorhen and pair of Purple Swamphens have become permanent features although there has still been no sign of the Bush Turkeys since the hailstorm last November. The number of small birds has increased dramatically, with Grey Fantails appearing on almost every other tree, and both Golden and Rufous Whistler numbers are increasing.

The saddest moment of the month was the death of Cheadle, my Border Collie.  Over a period of just a few days he lost his appetite and took to spending his time just sitting in the long grass down by the creek.  We took him to the vet, who told us that it was his time to go and so I made the extremely hard decision to have him put to sleep. I'm still emotional about it now, so I'll move on to other subjects.

Cheadle - sorely missed.

We had a couple of firsts for the Holt with a brace of Tree Martins flying with the Welcome Swallows and a lone Musk Lorikeet appearing on an emu feeder. I understand that around 750 of the 850 bird species can be seen on the Gold Coast and we're only reaching the 200 mark so there's still a lot of potential, although our specific habitat will make some limits.  I was really pleased to see the Rose Robins again, a beautiful little bird. I saw a pair of them on four separate occasions and have seen them since, so I'm hoping they may become regulars. I'm afraid these are archive shots because my camera is in the repair shop.

Female Rose Robin

Male Rose Robin

As we say farewell to Cheadle we say hello to a new member of the household, Montague.  Monty is a red Burmese, following Susanne's affection for the breed, and has already settled in. He was five months old and sitting in a glass box in a local pet shop, which Susanne passed on a regular basis. As the weeks passed his siblings were all purchased, leaving the kitty all alone.  Susanne felt she couldn't leave him there in the 'aquarium' and so after a few negotiations over the price he's joined the family. He's already proving to be a real character and spends lots of time playing with Tolkien (another cat that thinks he's a dog!).

Monty bird watching.

I'm just cute and innocent!

Will somebody fill the damn water bowl.

Go on, give me some. You know that ice-cream isn't good for you...please.

And onto the birds...

Regulars (Seen at least x5 per week)

Australian Magpie
Bar-shouldered Dove
Bronzewing
Double-barred Finch
Dusky Moorhen
Galah
Grey Fantail
Pacific Black Duck
Peaceful Dove
Pied Currawong
Plumed Whistling Duck

Plumed Whistling Ducks at feeding time,

Purple Swamphen
Rainbow Lorikeet

Rainbow Lorikeets on a seed bell

Striated Pardalote
Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Torresian Crow
Yellow-faced Honeyeater

Common (Seen at least x2 per week)

Eastern Spinebill
Grey Butcherbird
Lewin's Honeyeater
Noisy Miner
Rainbow Bee Eater
Welcome Swallow
Willie Wagtail

Uncommon (Seen 2-5 times per month)

Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike
Blue-faced Honeyeater
Brown Honeyeater
Collared Sparrowhawk
Eastern Yellow Robin
Golden Whistler
Grey Shrike Thrush

A Grey Shrike Thrush - dull colours but a wonderful juicy song.

Figbird
Laughing Kookaburra
Little Corella

Little Corellas and a Galah on the old gum tree.

Magpie Lark
Noisy Friarbird
Pale-headed Rosella
Red-backed Fairy Wren
Rose Robin
Rufous Whistler
Scarlet Honeyeater
White-throated Gerygone
White-throated Honeyeater
White-throated Treecreeper
Wood Duck
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo

Rare (Seen only once in the month)

Brown Thornbill
Grey Goshawk
Musk Lorikeet

A Musk Lorikeet - a first for the Holt

Satin Flycatcher

Satin Flycatcher on a Tree Fern

Silvereye
Tree Martin
Variated Fairy Wren
Wedge-tailed Eagle
White-faced Heron
Yellow-rumped Thornbill

And that's 57 species.  Next post winter arrives.

April and a little pottering going on...

It's mid-Autumn in Queensland and the cooler nights are beginning to settle in.  We had enough rain to top-up the tanks (at last!), but the dams are still below their normal levels. The Whistling ducks are still with us and are beginning to become a bit of a problem, because there's just too many of them. They try to steal the chook food and are causing quite a bit of erosion around the dam walls.  They're beautiful birds and I don't want to lose them entirely, but if their numbers dropped from the current 90+ to around a dozen I wouldn't complain.

Tolkien having a dip

 I've just been pottering this month. I've replaced most of the roofs of the chook sheds with steel roofing left over after after the house roofs had been replaced.  A little hail dented, but far better than the cheap wooden roofs that were there before.  We've only had this coop a year or so and it was leaking like a sieve.  The shade netting is there to hide them from passing raptors.

 

The roofs of the coops are replaced with wriggly tin

 It's been 6-months since the hail storm and the land has now repaired itself. If you know what you are looking for you can still see the scars on the branches where the hail scored them, but otherwise it's as if the storm never happened.  Having said that, as I mentioned in the last post, there has been some changes in the bird life with the complete absence of Bush Turkeys and reduced numbers of King Parrots, balanced to some extent by the horde of Plumed Whistling Ducks and the pair of Purple Swamphens and the Dusky Moorhen that have taken up residence.

The end of the Lap Swamp

We seem to have got the chook production line working well now. We have two brooders, two pullet runs and two main runs, all of which are usually full. Every 3-4 weeks I take another batch of eggs to Cat and her incubators and three weeks later she hands me back another batch of chicks.  They spend their nights in the brooders and days in the 'Chick run' until they become too big and need to be moved into a pullet run at about 4-weeks old.  They will stay in the pullet run for the next 8-12 weeks at which point they will either go off for sale, or if they are of particularly fine quality they may join the breeding flocks.

Two chicks taking up residence on the table.

 It does mean that we've become Hobby Farmers, or Chook Breeders, which is much further than I had planned to go, but I kind of like having chooks all over the place.

A pair of Salmon Faverolle Cockerels enjoying the afternoon sun.

Even if they do spend a great deal of time and effort digging up my flower beds!

A trio of 3-week old chicks taking a rest from digging up the flower beds!

 We've had a couple of small storms come through.  I was worried one day when we saw what I thought was going to turn into a twister, but to my relief it just got wet and windy.

I thought we had a twister on the way, but just rain.

This little chap was spotted by Julia Wallace when she and Martin came to visit.  The poor little fellah had been rooted out of the undergrowth by the dogs and had taken cover in the upper branches of the Grevillea whilst the dogs continued to search below.  It's not a mouse, it's a Grassland Melomys, although I have no idea what the big differences are.  You will all be glad to know that I called the dogs in and the Melomys was able to go back to enjoying the undergrowth.

A Grassland Melomys understandably scared watching the dogs searching for him below the Grevillea.

And now to the birds

Regulars (Seen at least x5 per week)

Australian Magpie
Bar-shouldered Dove
Bronzewing
Double-barred Finch
Dusky Moorhen
Galah

Galahs on the bird feeder

Grey Butcherbird
Magpie Lark
Noisy Miner
Pacific Black Duck
Peaceful Dove
Pied Currawong
Plumed Whistling Duck
Purple Swamphen
Rainbow Lorikeet
Striated Pardalote
Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Torresian Crow
Welcome Swallow
Wood Duck
Willy Wagtail
Wood Duck
Yellow-faced Honeyeater

Common (Seen at least twice a week)

Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike
Eastern Whipbird
Grey Fantail
Laughing Kookaburra
Noisy Friarbird
Pale-headed Rosella
Rainbow Bee Eater
White-throated Gerygone
White-throated Honeyeater

Uncommon (Seen 2-5 times a month)

Blue-faced Honeyeater
Brown Honeyeater
Eastern Yellow Robin
Figbird
Golden Whistler
Grey Shrike-thrush

Grey Shrike Thrush

Hardhead Duck
King Parrot
Lewins Honeyeater
Olive-backed Oriole

Male Olive-backed Oriole

Female Olive-backed Oriole

Red-backed Fairy Wren
Rufous Whistler
Spangled Drongo
White-throated Treecreeper
Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo

Rare (Seen only once in the month)

Brown Cuckoo Dove
Collared Sparrowhawk
Crested Pigeon
Dollarbird
Fan-tailed Cuckoo
Grey Goshawk

Grey Goshawk

Little Wattlebird
Hardhead

Hardhead or White-Eyed Duck

Mallard
Rose Robin
Satin Flycatcher

Satin Flycatcher

Scaly-breasted Lorikeet
Straw-necked Ibis
Varied Sitella
Wedge-tailed Eagle
Whistling Kite
White-bellied Cuckoo Shrike


Which is 62-species, well, it was a quiet month.