Day: December 2, 2012

It only takes a hint of good weather and we’re happy to go out to look for birds.
With the Bandicoot Big Brother House having been locked out for so long, we have been watching the comings and goings of some Eastern Yellow Robins.

We found the first pair today with a completed nest and the female hunkered down, with just her head and beak showing over the rim. This is one very deep nest methinks.

Apart from a trip to fill her vacant tummy, the male was not very active, and very quiet.  So it took awhile to track him down.  No sign of the helper(s) today.

Our good friend Richard A had also located a second pair, and we’d been to see them on another trip out. Today, Dorothy was feeling up to a longer walk so we made the journey along the track to where we’d seen them previously.  It is a small stand of Black Wattle regrowth, very spindly, very thick and very difficult to penetrate and almost impossible to see more than a few metres.  Ideal Eastern Yellow Robin country apparently.

On the way we passed by an area of extremely old, white, skeletons of former wonderful redgums.  The Sacred Kingfishers have been active in the area over the past few weeks, and today was no exception. The harsh, schrappp, schrapp, warning call allowed us to spot an active bird on one of the old boughs.  It kept up its high pitched scream and then disappeared to reappear high up on the tree next door.  My bet is of course, that there is nest going to be, or currently being, setup in the area.  Just too far down the track for us to constantly monitor.

Once we got to the Eastern Yellow Robin area, we sat, and looked and listened. A Grey Shrike Thrush and her recently fledged chick came by and she attended to its squawking needs.  But little else.

After a couple of cups of tea, and a bit more of a wait, it became obvious that not much was happening in that little area today. So, defeated we turned for home.  Heard another Kingfisher and stopped went into the scrub and instead of the kingfisher, found a Yellow Robin.

And then another. We started to find a spot for photography, when a lot of soft shrill chipping noises came out of the black wattle strand, and with a blur of brown feathers a very tiny chick landed on a branch, and then clung to it for dear life.  Dad responded by stuffing some green bug into its beak.  Some more chipping noises and a second one jumped along the leaf litter just below.  Dad responded with another little morsel.

So the score seems to be, One Pair, two fledglings.  Not a bad months works for the pair. They quickly moved the young ones out of our sight, and we saw them moving through the wattle, but to far away and too deep in for much opportunity for extra shots.

Even though the walk was much further than we’d normally do, we thought the day was pretty successful.