Yes back to swifts - a good day for them here on the tails of the hot weather. Local peregrines kek-kekking on pylons a few hundred yds from house (fly-by yesterday), and, a harbinger of autumn, a returning greenshank circling high overhead at local wetland calling, looking for somewhere muddy to land.....The tits are racing through the seed. The post of shed robin in our garden appears to be hereditary, one only has to open the door of the shed where the seed is kept for him (?) to appear. He tidies the floor while I fill the feeders. Also a vole darts out when the coast is clear.
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I am fortunate to have a lake out the front of my house with a view of one of NZ's largest bird sanctuaries (Kapiti Island) This acts as a draw for many birds. The lake attracts stilts, grey herons, black swans and spoonbills. Pukekos run wild around my compost heap and vege garden and are a bit of a pest. I have seeded bald patches on the lawn and this attracts huge numbers of finches - all introduced to NZ about 100 years ago by the settlers. Hawks circle above everyday looking for the odd thick rabbit or mouse.
Welcome Swallows return in spring. At the moment winter is a little dull for our bird life.Comment
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But - alas! no Moa.Originally posted by Aotearoa View Post
No moa, no moa
In old Aotearoa.
Can't get 'em.
They've et 'em;
They've gone and there ain't no moa!Comment
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Quite right PabMusic,
Moa has been revived as a palatable beer. Tuatara, a type of reptile we have, is also a beer. We don't just quaff the grape stuff down here.
The problem for our bird life is that, for many years there were no predators other than more aggressive birds. There were no indigenous mammals to eat them. Of course, once we humans arrived it changed the food pyramid somewhat. However, no one sent the Kakapo the memo; he can be a little too friendly.Comment
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About 30 years ago I had the pleasure of assisting a New Zealand ornithologist visiting the UK who was carrying out a major study into chaffinch song. He had set out to record English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish chaffinches, having done the same in New Zealand and Australia.Originally posted by Aotearoa View Post
Being a sedentary species the chaffinch develops local "accents" - different distributions of notes, twiddles and terminal flourishes in the song - and like human settlers in the Antipodes chaffinches developed distinctive accents there too. My task was to find him a wooded area with 100 adjacent chaffinch territories - as soon as we arrived, soon after dawn, a chaffinch sang, he dived into the bushes with his tape recorder, and was at it for the next few hours. Can't remember his name - I never saw the completed research - Christchurch University I think.Comment
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About 30 years ago I had the pleasure of assisting a New Zealand ornithologist visiting the UK who was carrying out a major study into chaffinch song. He had set out to record English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish chaffinches, having done the same in New Zealand and Australia.Originally posted by Aotearoa View Post
Being a sedentary species the chaffinch develops local "accents" - different distributions of notes, twiddles and terminal flourishes in the song - and like human settlers in the Antipodes chaffinches developed distinctive accents there too. My task was to find him a wooded area on my patch with 100 adjacent chaffinch territories - as soon as we arrived, soon after dawn, a chaffinch sang, he dived into the undergrowth with his tape recorder, and was at it for the next few hours. Can't remember his name - Peter somebody - I never saw the completed research - Christchurch University I think.
You have the Welcome swallow I think? - different to our Barn Swallow. And I like the sound of thick rabbits, are these a separate species or just particularly dim ones?Comment
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Thick rabbits pelt through my sliding doors on one side of my living area and out of the other sliders on the other side of the room. The can be brazen given the lack of any real predator. The also stare into speeding car headlights and lose that argument. The swallows also fly through my living room. Sadly they also bump into the glass on colder days with neck-breaking results.
Just to bring the thread back to classical music and birds, our local classical music station (sort-of Radio 3, publicly funded but on a shoestring) plays indigenous birdsong before the 7 and 8 o'clock news. I really like it and have learned a lot from the snippets. I think Radio Four was starting something similar.Comment
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Radio 4 here does that, Mondays to Fridays, at around 05:58, and one gets repeated later on Sundays. "Tweet of the Day" they call it.Originally posted by Aotearoa View Post
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For several weeks now there's been very little activity at the bird feeders, and there's a lot of food left over. Is this normal at this time of year?
Maybe there is a lot of other or more tasty food available for them right now.
I haven't seen any unusual/interesting birds lately, but I did walk across a field not too far away and heard skylarks. Not at all like the RVW piece IMO.Comment
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Lucky you is all I can say Dave. Our feeders are covered with young great tits, blue tits and chaffinches, and are emptying practically on a daily basis, it's costing a fortune. This is in spite of being surrounded by countryside.
Young robins, magpies, rooks and jackdaws hang around for whatever falls to the ground. Squirrels are usually in pole position on the ground, the collared doves have this thing of raising and stretching their wings full length over their heads to try to drive them off, the squirrels take not a blind bit of notice.Comment
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Tits and sparrows, maybe due to weather. Feral pigeons clearing up after them. Saw GS woodpecker this morning, first time for ages. Male blackbird still has young, I think.Comment
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I heard a missel thrush in full song yesterday afternoon in a local park - pretty late in the season to be singing for a mate. I know the feeling!
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Substitute "Crows" for Rooks, and I could have written this myself. Madly busy & tired, I (very untypically, often do it at 0200 by torchlight), missed re-filling the dispensers between Thurs and late Sat., yet one large one has been emptied already today, and all those tits and finches (Green, Chaff and Gold) are back in numbers. Wonder where they dined for those 2 days...? Probably au naturel, on the free range...Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View Post
I replaced the weeks-old Nyger seed - pleased to see the Goldies appreciating it again today.
Finally last week - for only the 2nd time this year a Buzzard soared over on the thermals, mobbed by a single Herring Gull - which it imperiously ignored. The Gull tried to do the same to a Sparrowhawk who also enjoyed the rising air, but with no more success... it's not quite the Bosphorus, but...Comment
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