Our fabulous Australian birds

My dear husband is not very computer savvy.  We actually have a laptop each, because I am inclined to do stuff and he is inclined to delete stuff. I do have to say though that he has fixed the odd problem over the years by googling and finding fixes to problems.

However, in the grand scheme of things, he plays on his computer and generally surfs, while I work ( and occasionally play games.)

Today he took some pictures with his camera. He has been taking pics for the past year, but had no idea how to get them off the camera. So today was copy and paste from camera to his computer. However before I talked him through it I copied them onto mine and he has got one or two really nice pics. I thought it would be nice to share them.

We both have a real soft spot for birds. Now for those of you who are not Australians, I need to tell you that we have some of the most beautiful birds here, parrots, colorful  fabulous, beautiful, noisy things that fly free, sometimes in their thousands.

Now that we have put paid to the rats that were around earlier, Peter has made a little bird feeding station. It brings the birds into the front lawn and we sit at the table and watch them. We have been regularly getting visits from a few sulphur crested cockatoos. They are big birds, clean looking, with a nasty beak that can crack open seeds and nuts and fingers, but even so, just beautiful.

These birds can live around 80 to 100 years of age. In some parts of the country they fly in flocks of hundreds. They are called sulphur crested because of the bright yellow feathers on top. You can see one holding a seed with his claw.  They are also great mimics, and can learn to talk quite clearly.

Peter has made this bird feeding thing where he can hang a block of seeds. The Cockatoos munch their way through it pretty fast, but then other smaller birds come along underneath and eat whats down there.

Not only do we have the cockatoos, there are thousands of rainbow lorikeets too. You can see most of one at the front. Peter took this picture through a window, so its a bit blurry  You can see in the background the mango tree in flower. They are noisy and bossy, most of the other birds are scared of them.

Parrots generally get around in pairs, they mate for life and spend all their time close together. Another bird we have is called a Galah.

This picture is not so clear, but as I am using them off Peters camera, well, that's how it looks. These birds are middle sized, and we also have lots of these around our homes.

These are king parrots, lovely things, middle sized, the male on the right, female on the left. This is at a different house sit, but we have a pair of them that visit us here. They are silent birds, I have never heard them make a noise, their flight is  noiseless, they just appear and disappear.

This is a kookaburra. They become more tame. This photo was taken at a different house sit but we could feed them by hand. They came morning and night and Peter would feed them a little minced meat. We have kookaburras here at this house sit, but we don't see them much. They come in at dusk and call, and then they call again at early dawn but are off hunting very early. The link below will take you to a YouTube video of some kookaburras on a television antennae, and you will here how much noise they make.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92w8Yn9TsQc&feature=player_detailpage

So these are a few pics from Peters camera. Hope you enjoyed them.