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This morning, while puttering about the yard between 10:30 - Noon, I
counted conservatively 80 Yellow-Faced Honeyeaters moving through.
They came in single pairs and small groups of between four and about 12,
all appeared to have taken Horace Greeley's advice and were heading west.
And House Sparrows have found Holt again - I was gettin' worried, haven't
seen hardly a one since last autumn when a flock of some thirty, comprising
mainly youngsters, far as I could tell, was loitering in the area for coupla
days. Today, at least twenty were trading back and forth between some evergreen
shrubs and a neighbour's chicken pen a lot of the time. Also, a flock of 14 (!)
King Parrots graced me with a visit, landed in a garden tree and generally
squabbled and squawked. I noted three mature males, three immature males and the
rest were mature females and/or immatures from what I could make out. After
three minutes, they upped and left.
Towards the end of a sunny day's birding and gardening, two neighbouring
junior aviculturists arrived to report a yellow budgie was hanging about outside
their aviary. Could I come help catch it? "Get the aqua-net," I commanded.
"The what?" "The garden hose."
A quick, albeit, gentle squirt, humanely applied, immediately impaired
Tweetie Pie's flying prowess and he/she fluttered to earth to be promptly
ensnared in a little bird keeper's paw. Their mum appeared with a towel, and
finished it off (the drying procedure, that is - not Tweetie Pie!) with a hair
dryer, and popped it into the aviary, where it immediately assumed a relaxed,
contented posture and began preening.
"There's a Zebra Finch hanging about too," a junior aviculturist chirped,
"could you aqua-net it for us?" "Well, I dunno ...," I started to say. But
their mum chipped in, "No! We'll leave the finch alone. You have seven budgies
now. That is enough!" Good onya, Momma!
John Layton.
On-call bird aficionado to every little twit in the cul-de-sac. Think I'll
start breedin' feral cats - big, rampagin', agro, bird-chompin' fe-lions! Then,
a poor man might get a bit of peace.
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