When I was driving past just now, the silhouette of a local magpie nest on the edge of Rocky Knob Neighbourhood Park showed an unmagpie-like occupant, which when seen more closely turned out to be
the below. The pair had previously nested in E cinerea street trees in Hamelin Cres.
I have friends who insist on calling these ‘owls’. Their relationship to owls is far from certain. The Sibley/Ahlquist re-sort put them with owls in Strigiformes, still followed in IOC. HBW/BLI
elevates the owls to a much loftier twig in the avian tree, a view closer to that in Howard & Moore. The recent decision to try for a reconciliation of the main lists {apart from HBW/BLI) will have to sort that out.
From: Martin Butterfield <>
Sent: Monday, 24 September 2018 2:56 PM
To: COG List <>
Subject: [canberrabirds] Re: Frogmouth on time
At times I worry about my observational skills. This morning coming back from our dog walk - within 30m of our house - i glanced at the ground and noticed a lot of whitewash at the foot of a spindly
tree. On looking up, there was the female Frogmouth.
From the amount of guano she - and/or her partner - have spent quite a bit of time there. And I would estimate I walk past this point, on average 6 times a day. My only defence is that she was
rather more camouflaged by foliage than usual.
On Mon, 24 Sep 2018 at 05:55, Martin Butterfield <> wrote:
I used the average time 'my' pair of Tawny Frogmouths spend building their nest (16 days) as a predictor of when the male would commence brooding That indicated he'd assume the position this morning:
and so he did.
This has surprised me a little as the pair's behaviour has changed this year. They seem to have found a new daytime roost site in 2018 as, while I had seen them a few times after dark, hunting
on our lawn, I didn't find during the day until 25 August. Since that date they have usually roosted in a tree close to the nest site but have never roosted snuggled together, The male has usually perched on a small dead branch about 50cm above the female.
As this behaviour is very different to the past I have speculated that one of the previous pair has died and a new partner acquired. (As the have used the same nest site - with plenty of, to me, similar alternative sites available in the area - I have assumed
at least one of them is of the pair that has roosted here in the past.
