Backyard Birds During Isolation

Since March 24th I've been staying home and self-isolating - and paying a lot more attention to my backyard birds than I usually do!

Eastern Spinebill

A few I see almost every day from the kitchen window, without having to leave the house at all. Like the Eastern Spinebills who love the grevillea just outside the window.

yum!

this one hasn't quite got its handsome adult plumage yet

At least one Red Wattlebird also visits the grevillea but it's super shy and absolutely does not want to have its photo taken.

this is the best I could do

Probably my favourite regular backyard visitors, who I also see from the window, are the Brown Thornbills.

small and cute!

They are obsessed with the bird bath under the fig tree. I had a deeper birdbath there but when I noticed them passing through the fig tree every day I swapped it for a shallow one and they love it.

They have been stopping by for a bath multiple times per day - of course it could be different groups of birds but surely there can't be too many thornbill gangs around here? I've even seen them having baths first thing in the morning in the rain - super keen!

The first birds I usually hear in the morning are the Australian Magpies. I managed to record a bit of them warming up in the backyard one morning. (There are at least 4 bonus species in this recording too!)

the pair in the recording, on the clothesline

I was expecting to be seeing more of the introduced birds but really Spotted Doves are the only ones actually coming into my garden at the moment. Common Mynas are all over the neighbourhood but seem to be only flying over my place and I've only had a couple of flyover Common Starlings too - weird!

Spotted Dove on the neighbour's roof

and enjoying the autumn sun

As for parrots, Musk Lorikeets sometimes pass overhead but the Rainbows Lorikeets are a constant - flying around, screeching a lot and hanging out in neighbours' trees.

also inspecting chimneys as potential nest hollows?

A pair usually comes and perches on the top branches of a tree at the back of my yard late in the afternoon.

the bare branches are a  a good vantage point I guess

When the restrictions started there was a huge flock of Little Corellas hanging around. They love the furry seed-ball thingies on the street trees at this time of year.

just one of probably 100+

Also, please enjoy some corella sound effects...

Besides all these usual species, I also had a few surprises in my first week or so of staying home. The first one was two Grey Fantails - only my third record of this species at home. Although very common birds, they are not at all common around my place.

Grey Fantail

They didn't stick around unfortunately, and were gone by the afternoon - I haven't seen them since. Given the time of year there's a chance these little guys had recently arrived on the mainland from Tasmania and so were on the move, but I'm not too confident with fantails subspecies identification...

alisteri or albiscapa?

Another bird I was not expecting was a White-browed Scrubwren - the local gardens and parks are not really scrubwren-friendly! It seemed to be associating with some Brown Thornbills.

I fluked this photo as it hopped over the back fence

I assume it's got caught up with the Brown Thornbills somewhere with more suitable habitat and is now on a little backyard adventure. I had actually seen one in my garden once before, also with Brown Thornbills, on two consecutive days back in 2016 - could it be the same one?

And I also have to mention these little cuties...

a pair of Silvereyes!

I have seen a few Silvereyes come in to help themselves to figs before, but it turns out they may be stopping by more often than I had thought. They must have been disappointed that the fig tree didn't fruit this year - luckily this little tree has a few other fruity snacks for them.

I've of course been keeping a list of all the birds I've seen or heard from home during this weird period, playing along with #birdthefeckathome and Jen's quarantine list challenge on the 5MR Facebook group. Unfortunately my yard is not very birdy, and I'm not in a very birdy neighbourhood. A lot of the birds on my list have been flying over, or heard calling from somewhere else. I'm at 25 species so far.

But then a week or so ago I got two new isolifers in one day: a distant glimpse of Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos flying through when I was alerted by their call, and then the silhouette of a Tawny Frogmouth on the neighbours' chimney in the evening. So something new could still turn up, or more likely, fly over!

I hope you're safe and well - and stuck somewhere a bit birdier than I am! Take care!