The Thursday morning before Easter brought a new bird for our garden list -
the 194th!
We'd had some rain overnight - the birds were busy everywhere, feasting on
hatching insects, washing, drinking, the garden was full of noise and
movement. I was maybe 20 metres or so from the house, watching a very pretty
female Leaden Flycatcher hawking, and then landing on a perch with a shimmer
of her tail.
Eileen called from the verandah that she could see a Golden Whistler; I saw
a Rufous Whistler close to the Leaden Flycatcher, and then the Golden that
Eileen had spotted. An active party of Varied Sittellas suddenly added their
presence, a virtual kaleidoscope of movement through the upper parts of our
garden gum trees, exploring under and over every small branch like miniature
Nuthatches, flashing their bright orange wing-patches.
Yellow Thornbills and White-throated Gerygones, both small and very yellow
added their colour and noise to the scene. Two Eastern Whipbirds were busy
around and in a birdbath, Superb, Variegated and Red-backed Fairywrens
were overlapping as they searched their way through the undergrowth.
Then, a flash of richer more rufous orange coupled with striking white in
the tail revealed that a new bird had joined the party. And new to Abberton
too - a Spectacled Monarch. What a beautiful bird of the forest to have in
the garden - the contrast between its black face, rufous underparts and grey
back with black in the wings and tail offset with brilliant white tail
patches.
Another sign to us that our ongoing plan of revegetation to link our garden
trees and shrubs with the
natural bush elsewhere on our property and beyond is really producing the
results we have been hoping for!
Bill Jolly
"Abberton",
Lockyer Valley, Queensland.
Visit our website at http://www.abberton.org
Email:
Ph: (+61) 7 4697 6111 Fax: (+61) 7 4697 6056
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