Fan-tailed Cuckoo

Fan-tailed Cuckoo Cacomantis flabelliformis

 

 

A bright and sunny morning at Willowmavin. I was walking through thick  young trees which have grown up after the fierce fires of 2014. The wattles are beginning to die off and eucalypt saplings are now beginning to look like mature trees. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cuckoo's very loud call, immediately tells the world he or she is about. The descending whistle is quite easy to  identify and with a bit of quite creeping around, they can be soon found, perching on branches, fence posts or in this case, an old clothes line, where they watch and wait to feed upon insects moving about on the ground beneath them. 

 Of course cuckoos are well known for their habit laying their eggs in the nests of other birds, usually much smaller birds. They will push the eggs of the resident birds  from the nest and then lay their own egg to replace those they have ousted.  Generally cuckoos lay a single egg in a nest, but can lay multiple eggs across multiple nests.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is a sad sight to see small birds, working frantically to provide food for their much larger foster brood. 

Brood parasites is the expression used to describe their behavior.

NEW HOLLAND HONEYEATER

 New Holland Honeyeater Phylidonyris novaechollandiae

Whilst waiting  for the train at Kilmore East railway station, there are many birds to be seen, flitting in and out of the numerous native plants between the station platform and the car-park.

 

 

 

There are numerous sparrows. They seem to centred around the old railway buildings where they have nests in the roof spaces. Magpies, rosellas, pardalotes, cockatoos, blackbirds, wattle-birds, currawongs, and wrens. The birds which attracts me most are the New Holland Honeyeaters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are a common bird in the Kilmore area. However they seem to maintain a small area of occupation. Kilmore is still a reasonably small town but there are places where these honeyeaters are rarely seen. Where I live I never see them. If I cross to some of the newer estates, just a kilometre away, where native gardens are more the  fashion, New Holland Eaters are common. Perhaps there are too many roses, camellias, daffodils and  other old world plants. Not too attractive to the honeyeaters.

 

 

 

We old garden dwellers of Kilmore need to put in more and more native plants to feed these beautiful and lively visitors. Beautiful and lively they may be, but they can be very aggressive towards other birds. They can be often seen chasing the wrens and parrots away from their patch. 

This morning I could see a number of birds  chasing each other between the bushes, as they all seem to do at this time of the year. But amongst them were adult birds with young ones. The young ones have a darker eye than the adults, a pale brown colour, Adults have a startling white eye. A vivid white surrounding a very black pupil. They always seem to be looking at you.