Hello Wendy and Birders,
I live in the even more urban suburb of Brunswick (Melbourne) and in summer
I occasionally see a Tawny Frogmouth fly over my house. I've never seen a
Boobook (or heard one) around here but did add White-plumed honeyeater to my
garden list only last week.
Cheers,
Susan
>From: "Wendy" <>
>To: <>
>Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Owls
>Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 10:29:27 +1000
>
>I concur with Graham!
>I have always been an owl fan, collecting images and figurines all my life.
>Let me share my own recent owl experience.
>A couple of months ago I received notification from my council that they
>were going to do powerline clearance pruning of our street trees. Last time
>they did this they kindly stomped all over the correas and other natives I
>have planted in my naturestrip. To circumvent a repeat of this I decided to
>do the pruning myself . One evening while up a tall ladder in my street
>tree
>(Lophostemon confertus) finishing the job I was amazed when an owl - a
>young
>Boobook I assume - landed in the tree an arms length from me. It too was
>amazed at what it found and left immediately. I had observed a lot of poo
>at
>that point but assumed this was from the huge number of Indian Turtledoves
>and Feral Pigeons my neighbour insisted on feeding in my yard, (I won't
>bore
>you with reasons) or the local Indian Miner tribe. (I subsequently looked
>beneath for pellets but could find none. - the local flying foxes use my
>trees - tall Eucs to perch in and masticate palm fruits etc so I have all
>sorts of strange debris from that!)
>I'm guessing the attraction of my home for the owl was the only large trees
>for quite some distance and the large number of mice in my front yard
>attracted by my neighbours grain feeding of ferals.
>I live in very urban (no bush) Coburg (inner Melbourne suburb) 1 block from
>Bell St.
>I've never heard owls calling here, and spend a lot of time in my garden at
>night. Have others noticed urban owls refrain from calling, or is this
>because they are unlikely to breed in such an area so have little need for
>mating/territorial calls?
>Wendy
>ps I am in a between circuits, insulated wire section of the power grid.
>
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