Spring News

Its been a long time since my last entry – there has been much to achieve while the weather has been fine and we have been enjoying our work outside in such glorious weather. Now we are well and truly into Spring! The strange call of the Barred Cuckoo-Shrike (described by Graham Pizzey as being similar to a toy mouth organ) always signals the arrival of warm weather to me and we have been hearing the calls for nearly a month now.
Our resident pair of Bush Stone-Curlew have hatched an egg! The chick is now only three days old so there is a long way to go, but it would seem with our program of trapping and shooting feral pigs that we have been successful in reducing the numbers of at least one predator.
A pair of Orange-footed Scrub-Fowl have been busy with their mound on a steep slope at the back of our workshop, patiently raking the organic material up the hill to the nest mound. We often see these birds around the garden, particularly early in the morning or at the end of the day. Recently they have been feeding on some of the Malay Apples lying on the ground under the tree. The fruit is knocked down by Spectacled Fruit Bats feeding at night as well as lorikeets and honeyeaters feeding during the day.
The wetlands are still quite full due to “dry season” rains but we now have three pairs of Green Pygmy-Goose residing here plus one extra female who arrived unaccompanied about two weeks ago. The other females were not at all pleased to see her and she spent some time being chased but now seems to have come to “an arrangement” and formed part of what appears to be a fairly stable trio. They are enjoying our plentiful waterlilies as does White-browed Crake and Jacana.