Backyard Chickens

We keep a small flock of chickens in the back yard, partly for eggs and partly as pets. However, I also use them for foraging behaviour experiments, and as they are all individual, this makes it easy to make good observations. here is a selection of portraits of the current flock members, they are all bantams.

Hiver, a white Silkie

Teal, a Pekin

Hermione, another Pekin

Thompson, with a P, her twin Thomson, without a P, looks identical but isn't.
They are Plymouth Rocks - very swift afoot

Nancy, a new young Wyandotte

Chalk and Cheese, the two new young Light Sussex twins

Islay, a young buff Silkie

Islay,  close up of her face

A good bath

There is nothing like a good bath for a girl to feel and look good

Hiver in her dust bath, looking a bit grubby

Really getting into it, dirt flying all over the place

Hiver all dry and fluffy after her bath

Doesn't she look good now!

More book reviews

There have recently been a couple more reviews of my book Eagle Days including one in the Scotland on Sunday photographed below.

And another in the BBC Wildllife Magazine saying,

  'captures the experience of following a truly wild bird wonderfully, and plenty of other wildlife is seen in the pursuit. This stimulating book will make readers want to head for the Highlands themselves.' Derek Niemann.

All the reviews have been favorable and I find it interesting to see the different topics and aspects which the reviewers have caught onto and chosen to highlight. I deliberately wrote the book with a weaving text, integrating the life of eagles as much as they are themselves integrated with the Scottish Highlands and all they encompass. We all see things differently. If only we all cared for eagles.

Cover shot

The recent edition of the Australian Field Ornithologist has used one of my images for the cover shot. The bird featured is a White-faced Robin Tegellasia leucops, and together with another shot in the main text it illustrates a species whose display behaviour is described in an article by John Rawsthorne and Richard Donaghey. 

Double Pink feeding her chick

Double Pink is a very well marked bird, and those markings
 blend in so well with the woodland background

The colour-banded Tawny Frogmouth, Double-Pink, which was rescued and successfully released back to the wild by the RSPCA, and her partner have lost one chick. It probably fell from the nest - they are terrible fidgets those young frogmouths - and then scavenged by a Red Fox, which is a common feral predator in the Canberra area.

However, the good news is that they still have one chick, it is fit, healthy and almost ready to fledge. Click on the link below to watch her at the nest with her chick.

Double-Pink feeding her chick