The Birds of Summer

"Uamby" has a range of seasonal visitors during spring and summer. The fruit ad blossoms on the trees bring them. The loudest and most unruly are the Friar Birds who squabble and fight with each other and other birds to get the sweet nectar from blossoms on the Silky Oak tree that towers over the house in the back yard. We weren't surprised to find it s a subspecies of the Friar Bird, called the "Noisy" Friar Bird.

These visitors are much further south than they should be. They are Little Wood Swallows, normally coming down only as far as northern NSW. This pair (they travel in pairs or groups) perched high in a river gum. It is their breeding season, and they must have wanted some privacy from their fellow, so they came this far south.Or could it be CLimate Change?

Birds are one of the key indicators of biodiversity because they thrive on insects and insects have a direct line of impact from soil biology. There are also direct lines of impact from our pear and crab apple trees. Hence the annual pilgrimage of a family of king parrots. This year we have eight of them, led by this male.

Another annual visitor is the Dollar Bird, who comes to fly his monotonous pattern - like a swooping triangle - always returning to the same high perch on a dead branch. This year the Dollar Bird, who comes down from New Guinea, has changed his routine, perching not outside the house but down by the river. He seems to be training an understudy. It could be his son (or daughter). The Dollar Birds have a white spot underneath their wing (shaped like a silver dollar which is a clue about when it was named.) The Dollar Bird is classified as a 'bee eater'.
Another bee eater that travels north to New Guinea during the colder months is the beautiful Rainbow Bird. It has two distinctive spine-like tail feathers, longer in the male than the female. It's splendid colours aren't shown in this photo (taken from the ground, with the birds on the top of a river gum). It is bright green, golden crown, bright blue cheek, blck and gold throat, bright sky-blue rump, black stripe through the eye. Sounds like a great costume for the Gay Mardi Gras.

This little fellow is also out of his patch. The Forest Kingfisher is not normally this far south. But he has been here for as long as we can remember. SO tiny and blue. He lives down along he river, but he came up to the house area on the day this photo was taken, when a wild storm was brewing.


The Blue-Faced Honeyeater is a permanent resident, regularly taking on the Noisy Miners for access to the blossoms on the native shrubs. In this photo the Honeyeater is feeding in the blossoms of the Silky Oak in the backyard, where it competes with visiting Friar Birds.
The hardest birds to capture on camera as the small wrens and silver eyes, etc. that flit from bush to bush, never standing still for long enough to focus on them. This is the Superb Fairy Wren male, in his mating finery. He had a gaggle of females buzzing around him on the day this photo was taken.The wrens are around all year.

These are called Apostle Birds. They travel in packs of around 12, though plus or minus 2 or 3. The swagger around, sqwarking to each other and sticking their beaks into everything.

The same can be said for the White-winged Chough, which have also invaded the gardens, ignoring the Apostles and digging up the leaf litter and mulch. They have a white patch under the wing which you can see in flight like the Dollar Bird.

There are many more birds: cockatoos, galahs, pidgeons, eastern and crimson rosellas, swallows, ducks, cormorants, etc... They are just the tip of the iceberg.