Widow Wonga is a bird very close to my heart….and is loved just as much by my husband Rob. She and her partner have been living and rearing chicks in our Blackheath garden over a very long period, sometimes producing several sets of twins a year. I
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My older sister gave me a late night, graphic account of Hitchcock’s The Birds after going to see that creepy movie many years ago. She was such a good storyteller that I lay awake in a state of terror. However, since then I have become an absolute
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This is a new chapter in the Blackheath Wonga romance, but first a brief recap. Last year our resident male Wonga fell in love with his own reflections in the shiny hubcaps of our house painter’s vintage VW van. It meant a long, lonely season, as he
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There is a constant battle during spring, when birds are competing for territory, water, and food to feed their chicks. Here in the Blue Mounains of NSW only the large cockatoos and kookburras rise above the fray. Size matters…..on the next level down currawongs will chase off
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There is no one more upset when a bird is killed or injured than my partner Rob. He is known as Dr Bob, for his ministrations to all manner of feathered creatures in our Blackheath garden. He scrubs out the birdbaths far more often than me, and
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It has been a long courting season for the bowerbird in Blackheath’s Memorial Park. I began monitoring his ‘boudoir’ in mid August 2018. Without doubt it was one of the most beautiful, symmetrically arranged collections of blue treasures I had ever seen. WOOING IS A WEARYSOME BUSINESS
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FOR THE BEGINNNG OF THIS STORY CLICK HERE 31/8/2018 Mr S. Bowerbird’s magnificent home in Blackheath’s Memorial Park was almost wrecked yesterday. Two (illegally) unleashed dogs tore through the middle of it before I could warn their owners. How they missed crushing the bower itself is
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I SAY YES! I must admit that Australia’s pied currawongs do not have a great reputation. They are opportunists, preying on unwary small birds and robbing the nests of others. I’ve never forgiven a local gang of them for harassing our nesting tawny frogmouth and stealing the
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According to urban mythology, Sydney’s Sacred Ibis are actually a scary mutation of the seagull. The story goes that over succeeding generations, one strain of gull became larger, more aggressive, and far more athletic, until…..voila!; Instead of lolling about at the Sydney Cricket Ground as seagulls do,
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LET’S SPEND A WHILE WITH WONGAS Let me introduce……the Wonga pigeon. The name derives from wonga-wonga, an Aboriginal name inspired by their call. Mind you, I would describe it as a gentle ‘whoop whoop.’ Gentle, yes, but it can be heard more than a kilometre away.
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