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

A close call

The colour-banded Tawny Frogmouth has two chicks, not one as first thought when they hatched. It is always difficult to see just how many there are when they are small and covered by an adult. But now they are more than two weeks old, beginning to fidget and are ever inquisitive - peering over the edge of the nest to what is going on down below and all around.

Which is just as well, for while I was watching them today, there was a chorus of alarm calls, mostly from Noisy Miners, screeching nearer and nearer. When I looked around at what the frogmouths were watching I saw a Brown Goshawk flit through the trees, around the frogmouths' nest tree, and then gone. It was hot today, about 33 degrees, so the frogmouths had been sitting quietly with their bills open to catch a breeze and cool down. Then as the alarms went off, they clipped their bills shut, half closed their eyes, and gently eased into their broken-branch pose. Once the danger was passed they gently relaxed and opened their bills again. The adult never heeded me much, but the chicks seemed to think I was fascinating, staring at me continuously.

A Quiet Vegetarian

Shingleback eating flowers

While out in the woods today I came across this little guy, a shingleback lizard. I see these animals most days I am out in the local woods, but usually I just say hello and walk on by, leaving them in peace. They are such quiet, passive animals, and almost completely vegetarian.

I could see this one from way off as I walked along a dirt road. It was struggling to pull down the long stems of a feral weed, a crucifer of some sort, to get at the flowers. But as it has such short legs and toes it could barely bend the stems over. So I pulled a few flower stalks and presented them to it. The shingleback took them straight away, no fear. I carried on chatting to it and gathered a heap of flower heads. Soon it was  eating out of my hand, it's lips touching my fingers as I held the stalks so it could pull off all the rich protein-filled parts of the flowers. 

A marvelous experience, to be trusted like that. 

Tawny Frogmouth fledging dates

There has been some discussion between members of the local Canberra Ornithologists' Group on the apparent synchronisation of the Tawny Frogmouth fledging dates in the Canberra area this year. So I have plotted these and those of the previous years on the graph below and ran some simple statistical tests on the figures. As not all birds have fledged in 2012 yet, the expected dates have been calculated for use now as some people have been asking for these figures. These dates will be corrected when possible and more precise analyses published at a later date.

The mean fledging date has been in mid-November every year, ranging from the 13th in 2009 and 2011, to 22nd November in 2010, although that year the mean date was late due to the influence of several late fledgings from re-lays after first breeding attempts failed. The median dates, from each year in order from 2009-2012 were 12th, 16th, 10th and 15th November. A simple ANOVA test for differences between years, not using any birds fledged from re-lays, showed no difference (P = 0.217, F = 1.51, n = 29,30,25,24).

The earliest fledging was on 14th October 2011 and the latest was 7th February 2010.