Hi,
Plenty of action in my garden, no need to go anywhere.
I try to do a couple of birdy-related things each season with my boys. I had planned to check out our local bower and put out some blue objects for our Satin Bowerbirds early in September and just hadn’t got around to it until an immature bird started building it’s bower literally under my nose, so I figure I’ve been reminded. Last year I hung short lengths of blue ribbon from a tree outside our living room window.
Yesterday I noticed a couple of meters away there was a cleared space and a green bird fussing around there, so I threw it a blue peg. Retreating to my hide (the living room above) I watched as this immature bird picked up the peg and then seemed to discard it in a corner of the area. This morning the boys and I cut up a few pieces of blue felt and put them nearby. Promptly two pieces were incorporated into what I realised was the display area. I noticed there were lots of twigs on the ground that hadn’t been there previously, but no bower building as yet. Interestingly there is a red object there too, which makes sense as apparently immatures are still learning to discriminate colours. There has been quite a lot of noise coming from that corner of the garden, I’m really curious to know whether he’s going to attempt the actual entrance towers. One other observation was a mature male came and stole a twig from him, so I wonder if he’s going to make off with our immature’s blue things too. The boys are loving it, we’ve been making blue things to put out – blue fingerknitting, a blue felt bird, etc. Today there were three green birds, two of them displaying and competing for the bower – presumably one female and two immature males. And the blue peg was a hotly contested item, being taken by one bird over the fence and then eventually back to its original position. Lots of whistles and buzzes to entertain as well.
There, not so quiet at our end, Merrilyn!
Cheers,
Arwen
………………………………….. Arwen Blackwood Ximenes arwenbx@hotmail.com
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
