Is the nest-building of
Magpie-larks usually a long-drawn out affair?
I’ve been watching off and on since early October the activities of two pairs of Magpie-larks in neighbouring Ainslie streets
- Paterson and Campbell Streets.
The Paterson St nest- in a
Celtis australis street tree- was well under way on the 7th of October.- with both birds ferrying wet mud from the gutter on a shed next door to us and flying constantly across our garden.
The half built nest looked like this on Oct 7:
They have continued working on it since - and were hard at work still this morning (8 Nov., 4 weeks later) with the nest wall
a few cms taller now.
Over the same period, the Campbell Street pair (a bare 200 m away) have started and abandoned two nests (far left and far right
in ths photo below) , and are now working on a third one -all on the same branch of a
Quercus lusitanica street tree.
Is this unusually protracted?
Robin Hide
