My baby.

If you go back into the previous months, you will find a post called The Circle of Life, and I talked about a bird that we found dead.  The next day we found that it wasn't my tame bird that had died but some other bird. (Lets face it they all look the same).

So here is a short update on my bird, a pied butcher bird. The picture is not my 'baby' but a pied butcher bird that frequented us when we were doing a house sit on the Sunshine  Coast. They are said to be the bird with the most beautiful song in Australia.

He has become more and more tame. In the mornings he will come to the back ranch slider and cling to the security mesh door and call me. If I have missed that visit, then I have now found that I can open the ranch slider and call him. I have given him the name of 'baby'. Not very inventive really, but it sort of evolved. So I can go the the back door, call him and he will come, with what is probably his wife, and sing to me as I feed him. He is the most fabulous little bird.

He came back.

I am pleased to say my bird came back. He, or she, arrived later in the day, and as usual asked for his daily bread. I was so pleased to see him.  He sat on the large pot plant calling me, and then as he ate the bread he talked to me, then with a larger piece of bread in his beak, sat on the edge of the pot, looked at me, and sang before he flew off. I am so pleased to see him back.

In case you have never heard a pied butcher bird, they are said to be one of the most beautiful of all Australian song birds.  Here are two recordings. One is a recording of butcher birds in the outback.

http://www.listeningearth.com.au/blog/a-beautiful-nature-sound-recording-pied-butcherbirds-in-the-australian-outback


Below is a youtube clip of a butcher bird recorded in someones back yard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfaplSc5ieM

The circle of life.

The weather is not nice, showers coming and going and heavy rain forecast over the next few days. One of the good features of our current home sit is that it has a very effective fire place.

When we first moved to Queensland, we considered the winters to be very warm, and when we would visit friends homes and see a fireplace, we would be amazed that anyone living in the 'tropics' would ever have a fire, even in the winter. Well, we have acclimatised now, and we get just as cold as the locals, and as our house is just at the foot of Mount Tamborine, we are a bit above sea level and we feel the cold at night. So we have fires.

On the fence line there are a few well established pine trees and from time to time we go down and collect some cones using them as kindling. The last time we got some was about two weeks ago, but there has been a bit of wind and more have fallen. Today I picked up a few more and there must be a change in the season, because this is the first time I have seen them sprouting like this. The green shoots are fresh growth.

 Many of them have what looks like pine needles sprouting and one or two have green tips coming from the cone and actually sticking into the soil. You can see the sprout on the top right of this cone.

I am no expert on pine cones, although I must say the design and they way the seeds are all layered is just amazing. But I was surprised to find I had to actually tug at this cone to get the sprout out of the grass. I guess it is the time of the year, but it was something I had never seen before. Life goes on.

On the other hand, life comes to an end. In almost every house we have lived in here in Australia we have had problems with birds flying into the windows. Not every day of course, but from time to time there is a bang as a bird hits the glass, sometimes gently and sometimes with significant force. I think it is something to do with reflections in the windows, where trees are reflected and the birds think it is safe to fly through. In one house, there was a bedroom window that was often flown into by birds.

Today Peter found one of the pied butcher birds outside the back door. I don't know if it is the one that usually comes to me for bread each day or not. Over the next couple of days, if he doesn't come back I will assume it was my bird. He was lying on the grass close to the house, so although we didn't hear any bang we assume he hit one of the windows.

Such a beautiful little bird. I'll really miss him.