Hello there!

[pat]

Les, I was lucky enough to get decent shots of four species of fairywren.

[Linda]

I can cope with a fairywren - in fact they are quite sweet - but please, no more cassowaries!!   

[pat]

 

[blackrockrose]

@ Pat

I can confirm the magpie problem, and they particularly detest cyclists.

So I can only cycle from March to August (outside the mating/hatching/fledgling season), and I am reduced to walking for exercise from September to February, armed with a stick to wave around above my head to deter sharp-beaked swoopers. It can be very alarming, and very dangerous if you are on a bike, since if attacked it's hard to resist the automatic reaction to duck and swerve, possibly into the path of a passing car. You would hate it, Linda.

Sorry we hijacked your thread, Lainey.

[Lainey]

I have no problem with this thread being hijacked by bird lovers. My partner and I also love to watch our feathered friends. This morning I had juvenile magpies singing on our deck. No problems with attacks here. The emus (if you chase them on a motorbike or suchlike) can give you a nasty surprise from their nether regions - serves you right I say!

[Hobbit]

Wonderful pics Pat They really are the most beautiful birds.

[Les303]

Lovely photo's Pat , particularly the one of the splendid fairywren which is , well , just splendid.

I must say that I am not convinced by the quote from Linda " I can cope with a fairywren - in fact they are quite sweet" , I mean " sweet " can be interpreted in a couple of ways.

[yelnats]

Magpies! Can't walk out on to the front verandah in the afternoon without them demanding food...

[Linda]

Now you come to mention it, I can imagine a fairywren would taste quite sweet, Les and I do try to eat as many birds as possible in the hope of helping to keep their numbers down!   

[Les303]

Burp !!!

[pat]

On the subject of food, I was feeding chips to currawongs (a crow-like bird) on the balcony at O'Reilly's. There were several of them; most would swoop and catch a chip in mid-air but one was brave enough to come and snatch them from my fingers. The commotion alerted this beauty who flew in looking for a meal, although it wasn't chips he was was after. All of the currawongs escaped; I guess if the goshawk had managed to catch one of them he'd have had potato with his meat. 

[guiltypleasure]

Hi Pat
I'm so glad you had a great time in Australia and loved our bird life!  You might be interested in this:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2017/nov/20/australian-bird-of-the-year-2017-vote-for-your-favourite

It's currently on the Guardian website - you get to vote for your favourite Australian bird for 2017.  So hard to choose a favourite from the 50 they have on there
cheers
Linda

[Les303]

Hello guiltypleasure , 

You are yet another one of those very good players that I always try keeping in touch with on the on the scoreboard , don't ask me why , but for some reason I always imagined that you were a male so how nice to discover that you are in fact female ( unless of course you just happen to have an unusual Christian name ).

I am sure that Pat will provide her own response to your post but I am guessing that there would be no dilemma for her as her favourite will always be the fairywren.

Cheers Les303

[pat]

Thanks for that link, Linda. As Les correctly predicted, my vote went to the splendid fairywren. I saw, and indeed got decent photos of, nearly all the birds on the list so had I not had special affection for the little fairywren, casting my vote would have been a bit more difficult.

Once you vote you can see the votes received for all the birds and I was very surprised to see that the white ibis is ahead of the pack by thousands of votes. I was equally surprised that this beauty isn't on the list, maybe because unless you visit O'Reilly's it's not easy to see. Les, you must have seen them when you were there. Indeed if you offered food to them you'd have had them eating out of your hand.

[guiltypleasure]

Hi Pat
I was really surprised about the ibis as well.  I didn't even think it was native to Australia but there you go.  I put it down to the readership of the Guardian being mainly inner city dwellers (as is the ibis), non-mainstream, and a bit contrary.  Nice to see Magpies come in second place.

Les, there are probably better players to be following lately - I seem to have gone off the boil a bit.  Thanks for your sense of humour, although perhaps that is distracting me from my game!  I particularly enjoyed the recent offering that came with a 'warning'....

cheers
Linda