That slow moving high stayed with us again today, and it seemed that an golden light evening would again be gifted to us.

We decided to go to the red-cap nurseries and see how things were progressing.

Lovely golden light was spilling through the trees, and we soon located a couple of males and their young.
I set up the camera pointed at a Striated Pardalote hole as I expected them still to be feeding. I use a wireless remote and after setting up the camera move back about 50m to give the parents plenty of room.

This time things went a little differently, after providing a few quick meals the parents were not visible for 15-20 mins. And then one returned with a big bug, and a baby Pardalote stuck its head out of the small hole (read very tiny hole), and seemed to be begging, but the parent was having none of that, and the process repeated itself for quite awhile.

It dawned on me, that what they were trying to do was to encourage it to come out and fly.  Except.  The tiny hole it was pushing out was too tiny even for a tiny pardalote. And it could gets most its body out with a lot of squirming and pushing, but then. It got stuck. The little wings and legs couldn’t get out of the hole and it had to retreat, and try again.
Now I suspect that when you’re a baby pardalote, not a lot of brain power goes into this. So push harder. Nope, still can’t fit. Ok, push more. The concept of big/small/ up/down, in/out and relative size are not big issues in a tiny pardalotes tiny brain and it  probably doesn’t get much help from the gene pool.

They are the tiniest of birds. Laying across my open palm they only cover about half way. So there  is not a lot of room in there for problem solving.  So its likely we’ll not see Pardalote On the Moon, anytime soon. But I suppose the upside of that is they don’t spend a lot of time making things to blow one-another up with either.

Ok, to solve the problem Mum brought in a nice big juicy worm and dangled it at the top of the ‘big”, (a bit bigger than very tiny). Still having decided that pushing harder would get the job done it continued to push out of the tiny tiny hole and get the worm.  Mum retreated.

A big fat bug soon appeared in the place of the worm and a lot of Pardalote “plink plink plinking” and a second adult arrived and then an uncle or aunt.  Then to everybody’s surprise the little bird pulled its head in, popped out of the ‘big’ hole and was free to fly after Mum with the big bug. The second bird followed in a few seconds and it too was on the wing.

Now I’d love to show you the pics of the flight to freedom, but unfortunately as often happens on very special events, the autofocus on the Nikon went out for a holiday to the Caribbean and all the shots were out of focus.  All of them. Every one. The lot.

But when the small birds were gone the “Peril Sensitive” (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams), kicked out, and the last shot of the parent on the tree on its own is ‘sharp’.  Serves me right for forgetting to manual focus. My usual step when multi bursting from remote controls.

Then when the night, light, birds just couldn’t get any better, the White-fronted Treecreeper put in an appearance and we got great views, if not great photos of this lovely bird.  She was again on her own. But my mate Ray will be happy to know she is just inside the shelter area.

Henny and Penny landed on the same stump, so I montaged them for a bit of fun. Enjoy

 

Now if you fly out, I’ll give you such a nice reward.