Frogmouths in the garden are fairly commonplace for the Canberra resident, but there is a bit of a story to the trio currently in the silver birch in the backyard. The pair had been around for a while, although one is never sure about
the continuity of particular individuals. During winter the pair could be seen in the leafless tree in the neighbour’s yard over the back fence, and then seen at a nest in a street tree (an E cinerea). That nest failed, probably from a couple of days of severe
wind, but a few weeks later a fluffy frogmouthlet was found on the ground, leading to a conference between 3 sets of neighbours. Inevitably someone wanted to ASK THE GOVERNMENT WHAT TO DO (evidently not an adherent of the philosophy of Ayn Rand), attracting
the advice (I’m told) ‘LEAVE IT THERE AND THE PARENTS WILL FIND IT’. Well they couldn’t fail to FIND it with the chick on a stump 1m above the ground, and a parent sitting above it at 1.5m. The question was what would they DO about it. So that was the last
I saw of it for a while. On Sunday the next-door neighbours drew my attention to the pair sitting in a WEEPING (single) silver birch level with their rear deck and about 8m from it. Yesterday I found the pair high up in my ageing silver birches (planted
in a threesome by a previous owner, because that was, as he said, ‘what everyone did with silver birches in those days’) – and this time there was a third bird nearby, presumably the once-grounded juvenile, no worse for its childhood adventures. They are
still there today (choosing this time a different member of the once compulsory trio of birches).
Other news is that the seasonal moratorium on A Ravens flying off with orange golf balls (on which Kathy Cook is our expert, if you need to know more about it) has ended. One flew off with mine this morning at Royal Narrabundah. Back
to the white ones then
