Newstead – Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER

Spoke to Mr An Onymous and suggested that we might like to do a day trip up to see the Rainbow Bee-eaters working in the creek-line at the Newstead Cemetery.
The promise of a pie from the Guildford General Store sort of clinched the deal, and we found a day that looked promising weather wise and planned accordingly.

Best light in to the creek-line would be late afternoon as my Mum’s “Keep the Sun over your Left Shoulder, Dear!” would be just the ticket.

Phoned Guilford General to ensure that they would have a pie in the warmer for us, and chose a Lamb Rogan Josh and a Chicken Kashmiri as the likely candidates. “All good to go,” says Emily. We then packed the gear and headed up.

Continue reading “Taking a bit of a drive for Pardalote Parenting” →

We’ve been up around the Newstead area this past week. Went up for the annual Werribee Birdlife (Formerly Werribee Wagtails) camp out.

On one afternoon in the RIse and Shine Bushland area we were quietly travelling through the forest, when I was pretty sure I’d heard the familiar “Peter, Peter Peter” of Jacky.
So we stopped and eventually I reckoned it about 500mm further down so we went to look. No doubt about it, a Jacky Winter, and quite vocal, and very busy. The EE spotted a pattern of flying into one tree, and a few minutes later announced, like some magician about to pull a rabbit from a hat. “Look, she is building a nest!”.

Now of course you have got to have seen a Jacky Winter nest before to have any idea what you are looking for. Mr An Onymous who was with us peered into the trees, scratched his head, got out his ever dependable Nikon binos and looked again. “Where?” Which is a pretty good question as Jacky doesn’t exactly go in for high class up market building. If there was one of those ‘reality building’ shows for birds she’d be among the bottom of the backyards.

And there on a tiny Y in branch was an almost imperceptible bulge. And pretty soon Jacky confirmed that by adding some more spider web to hold it all together.

Hope she is successful.

Enjoy.