Saturday, March 9, 2013

Visitors

We spend a lot of evenings sitting in the front garden watching the birds finding their evening feed and choosing the right tree for their night's rest. The rainbow lorikeets love the flowering gum for a feed, then roost in the willows. The galahs and sulphur crests prefer the pines, while the rosellas join the lorikeets in the willows. The magpies also like the pines, but as far away from the parrots as they can.

We also see the Little Wattle birds, New Holland Honeyeaters and the  Eastern Spinebills sipping nectar from the Eucalypt flowers, the salvias and fuchsias. The red browed finches, blue wrens, fantails and the grass wrens love the sprinkler and spent a lot of time in the bird bath before bed, while the blackbirds scratch around in the garden mulch for grubs and insects.

We have a large flock of yellow tailed cockatoos that sweep in every evening to spend time in the pines, while on the dam we see black duck, mountain duck and the occasional ibis. A veritable bird rec centre.

Yesterday evening I was thrilled to be able tocatch these honey eaters bathing in the birdbath just outside the kitchen window. There is a little goldfinch there too. At one time there were 6 honey eaters in the bath, but those photos were not good enough to put up on the blog.

They look so cute when they're wet and fluffy.

Liz Needle

4 comments:

  1. How wonderful! They do look like they are very happy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wonderful little creatures. You certainly get a different variety than we do. I can't guess what part of the world you must be in.

    Good shots! I have never seen these before. They look hesitant and unsure of what to do.

    We get few Goldfinches here but only in the winter when they are a kind of French mustard color.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The variety we have is the New Holland Honeyeater, though we also get the Striated Honeeater. These are both Australian varieties - we live in South Australia. Goldfinches are an introduced species, though they are notregarded as a nuisance. First brought to Australia with early colonists as cage birds.

      Delete
  3. The honey eaters appear to be sweet birds. Wonderful photos of them!

    ReplyDelete