Birds and animals

The birds and wildlife are noticeably different than at home... cockatoos screetch overhead as they fly by, often in groups of 3 or more. There are magpies, warbling and burbling away. The possums are overhead, several times/day or night, and we've seen their tails dangling over the edge of the roof, or have seen their sweet little faces perched up on a board in the garage.

Yesterday afternoon several kokaburras landed in the yard, looking around for eats... often you can hear their maniacal laughter in the distance somewhere. The kids note they are just like crazed monkeys when they laugh.

We often find blue and black and some red rosella feathers in the yard near the clothes line.

The sounds of the magpies are intruding on my dreams -- last night it seemed as if they were calling all night, but I'm guessing it was just from 5 or so onwards. The sound is like birdsong distorted through water pipes, just great. I came up the walk this morning from the kids' school, and one was hopping on the drive... "Hi", I said... "AWK", it said back. And several more exchanges. Then it hopped up and flew away to a tree, sat for a minute, then called in the warbling note to another bird, who immediately answered. It probably thinks I have some weird harsh voice, because that's what I got back!

A field of cockatoos in the horse paddock the other morning in the mist/rain. They must have found some good eats there... snails were crawling across our walking path as we went up the hill to school (they kids were rescuing the snails by taking them from the gravel path and placing them in the grassy slope beside is... like their worm rescue operation at VB!). Maybe the cockies like the snails. All we could see in the mist were about 30 white and yellow feathered heads, looking around. The horses were standing still. That night I dreamt I was feeding a great assortment of birds, many of them eating out of my hand... wishful thinking?

The lyre birds are more shy, or at least we haven't seen any yet in our yard. They can apparently mimic all kinds of sounds... Tom heard a guy whistling for his dog, and then in the distance, a bird whistled back. The dog was looking around, as you can imagine!

The neighbours have king parrots on their deck... I will have to go over to see one.