Cassowary chicks often hatch in September (rainforest fruits usually are most bountiful in spring and summer). As there is not much food for them in the wet sclerophyll forest at that time, we normally get to see the family in June/July, when the chicks are much bigger, have lost their stripes and are almost ready for life on their own.
Yesterday, though, 5 year old “Goldfinger” came by very late in the day with two small striped chicks. They are probably about 2 months old and his first offspring. He mated with “Wattle”, the alpha female in the area, in June 2019 (once even just outside our kitchen window!), but didn’t have any chicks that year.
Notice his wet feet: they had a drink from the creek not far down the track.
Tree-kangaroo joeys normally leave the pouch around September, and this season our female Lumholtz’s tree-kangaroo has 2 joeys on foot: last year’s daughter and the new baby.
No sign, yet, of the wet season here. These Green-eyed Tree-frogs are patiently waiting for rain.
I am surprised that the female is tolerating the male. They’ve been hanging out like this on top of the cabin’s window sill for the last few days!
Our creek has almost dried up, so the bird baths are in high demand.
Here are a few of the visitors:
Scaly-breasted Lorikeets.
Many are here now that the Red Mahoganies (Eucalyptus resinifera) are flowering.
Rainbow and Little Lorikeets are part of that flock, too, and in the evenings Little Red Flying Foxes take over the canopy..
White-browed Scrubwren
Fuscous Honeyeater (“Herberton Honeyeater”)
Red-browed Finch, nicely showing the red rump
adult and immature male Scarlet Honeyeaters
male White-throated Treecreeper
Treecreepers always walk into the water backwards!
White-cheeked & White-throated Honeyeaters
White-naped Honeyeater
High above the bird bath, a young male Victoria’s Riflebird is trying to attract attention:
Adult male:
:
If you thought a male Victoria’s Riflebird is a black bird with a few patches of metallic blue, have a closer look at the ‘black’ parts:
Just about all the smaller birds are breeding now, with many hungry mouths waiting to be fed:
Macleay’s Honeyeaters
A young Tooth-billed Bowerbird came to the birdfeeder:
What a wonderful forest, where you can see Tooth-billed Bowerbirds (a rainforest species) together with Little Lorikeets (a species of open woodlands)!
Cameras, which are motion triggered, might not provide the best of images (unless you spend a lot of money), but they are useful for monitoring wildlife. The images are usually good enough to identify the species.
We have a few scattered on our 52 acre property and the ones near the creeks are especially productive.
Saw-shelled Turtle juvenile cassowary
Who would have thought that the fruit-dove or the Grey Goshawk comes regularly for a drink?
Superb Fruit-dove Grey Goshawk
or the Rufous Owl for a drink and sometimes bath in the very early morning.
And we caught a pair of water rats in flagranti!
Water rats, mating and Rufous Owl
The Black Bittern fished this section of the creek for several weeks.
Black Bittern and cassowaries
Swamp Wallaby and 2 cassowaries
Echidnas are frequently seen -alas, only by the cameras!
Echidna and DingoYellow-bellied Glider and Striped Possum
Tree-kangaroos come to the ground more often than you might think!
Swamp Wallaby and Tree-kangaroo
Sometimes an animal takes an interest in the camera 🙂
I am sitting in a reclining chair on the veranda with a glass of wine and my binoculars. Not that I really need the latter much, the birds are only 5-10 metres away.
The Lilly-pillies along our creek (Syzygium smithii) are fruiting, and I can see several species of birds feeding in close proximity: about a dozen Satin Bowerbirds, a handful of Spotted Catbirds, 2 Toothbilled Bowerbirds and a Golden Bowerbird. The Catbird and Golden BB often jump up from the larger branch, on which they are sitting, and hover like a very clumsy flycatcher to pick a fruit from the end of a thin branch. After eating 10-15 they sit for a digestive rest before starting to feed again.
Golden BowerbirdGolden BowerbirdSpotted CatbirdGolden Bowerbird and Spotted Catbird
Almost got the Tooth-billed Bowerbird in the same frame…
Did I mention the flock of King Parrots, also tucking into the Lilly-pillies? They, of course, are after the seeds.
male King Parrotfemale King Parrot
Also in the picture are a few Victoria’s Riflebirds, rustling around in strips of Rose Gum bark, a pair of Crimson Rosellas are tinkling away to my left, and a pair of Eastern Whipbirds are calling from the other side of the creek.
male Crimson Rosella
All this activity makes me almost ignore the the smaller birds around me: Mountain Thornbills slowly travelling through the Lophostemon trees, a pair of Yellow-throated Scrubwrens darting around on the ground and several honeyeaters visiting the birdfeeder.
If this isn’t good enough: Dad cassowary and his 2 chicks appear along the walking track next to the creek, picking up Lilly-pilly fruit dropped by the bowerbirds!
Now all that’s missing is the young male Lumholtz’s Tree-kangaroo, which we’ve spotted recently, and maybe the Koala, observed last week in the Tumoulin forest, is making its way a bit further east 🙂
It is easy to forget all the world’s problems in a place like this!
