Our other feathered friends.

As much as I detest the Minor birds at our house on the coast, I adore all the bird life at the farm  ( even though at times they also cause problems for us)
I thought I would show you a few pictures of some of the birds we see regularly. I apologise in advance for the quality of a few of the photographs, as I just can't always seem to get the greatest shots.
One of my all time favourites is the double barred Finch, they are such tiny little birds, and they flutter around with a little "peep peep" and stick mainly to the climbing rose, and other bushy growth that will offer them protection from the bigger  preditory birds.

They make small tunnel like  nests in the Banksia climbing rose which is right at my back door, and flutter off in fright each time we step outside. They adore our bird bath and are always  having a little splash, especially when the weather is warmer.

We were looking after a friends canary  a while back and we loved watching the little finches interact with the canary. We arn't  sure who was envious of who, but they were cute.
Another old favourite is the King Parrot, a large bird with striking  red and green colours. The male has a brilliant red upper body while the female remains all green. As beautiful as these glorious parrots are , they reek havoc during the stone fruit season. They will virtually strip a complete tree overnight. So unfortunately we have to constantly net all our trees because of them if we wish to rescue any sort of decent fruit crop.They also love all the succulents in the garden.

We used to keep feeders out for them, as there were only a few, but numbers rapidly increased so we don't encourage them as much these days.

Australia's pink and grey Galah is a lovely bird, usually in small flocks and roam the paddocks looking for seeds and grain. They  drink at tanks and stock troughs and natural waterways, and are only a nuisance  to us   when we plant a feed crop as we arn't able to bury the seed deep enough due to  not having the right  equipment.Otherwise they are  totally harmless and beautiful bird.
The Willy Wag tail is another sweety, a noisy little black and white bird that often build his nest near and inside farm buildings, placing his little nest on the rafters and reacting noisily when humans and dogs come near.He has a loud sort of racheting noise to warn you off. We often see him hopping about on the backs of the sheep and cattle,looking for bugs and insects.

He too loves to have a splash about in the bird bath.
The Rosella is a  lovely colourful bird, this is the Eastern Rosella and we have made him a breeding box which we have located under the eaves at the front of our house, near his favourite apricot tree.
Rosella's  will also eat the stone fruit, but most of the year are seed eaters.

Another pretty parrot is the Red Wing,  we have only seen them  twice in the 10 years that we have owned the farm, although common in other areas, we we lucky to catch  the pair on camera when they came in to feed.

The parrots in Australia are very beautiful, and we are so lucky to have so many different varieties come to our place. Visitors to the farm  love to sit early morning and late afternoon and watch these gorgeous feathered creatures.
The Bullen Bullen is another parrot we get occasionally, he is very timid unlike the King parrots and he doesn't stay around for long and you have to be quick to get a photo of him.

The sulphur Crested White Cockatoo is a large beautiful white bird that tends to hang out in the tree tops and has a extremely loud screech as his call. They can be very destructive to plants and buildings and twice already we have had to replace most of our window flyscreens that they have ripped holes in while we were not at the farm. They tend to hang in large groups and can live up to 80-100 years old.

The Butcher Bird, so called because of his cruel nature to  small reptiles and other baby birds in nests,
is a frequent visitor to us, his beautiful melodic call usually wakes us  early in the morning .
He is nothing spectacular, just black/white/brown, there are several varieties of butchers.

We have Currawongs which are a large black bird. Masses of them come every year to strip  the orange berries on my Cotoneaster bush.
Another black and white bird we see a lot of is the Magpie, that loves to be hand fed little parcels of meat that he quickly takes back to  the nest to feed their young.This magpie was trying to get a mouse out of this cage that we had caught the night before. They are very smart, they can pull the handles down,flip the top of the cage off and have that mouse before you can blink.

A couple of other tiny birds we get are the beautiful Blue Wrens, they live in the thorny Cotoneaster bush and other small prickly shrubs where they know they are safe from preditors.(especially the Butcher birds and the Currawongs).There is also another small dainty bird that hangs around, brown/white and yellow, don't know yet what he is, but was lucky enough to snap a pic one day of him.You can see how small he is beside that purple clothes peg.

Occasionally of an afternoon we get the Top Knot Pigeons wandering around, a quiet bird that doesn't hurt a thing . He comes in for a feed and then disappears for ages. He makes a particular noise when he flies that is easily recognizable.

All of the above birds have been photographed on our place, usually right near the house. The next fellow the Emu wasn't on our property, although there are many that live in the area. These fellows I photographed a few kilometres from our farm. We regularly see them .I just had to include them as they are just such a wonderful big bird.

As well as all these birds, we also have Crows,Sparrows, Kookaburras Apostles, Black Cockatoos, eagles and Mowpoke owls to name but a few.

,And last but not least, my little chooks........bought them when we first bought the farm  as table cloth weights, but loved them so much I decided to attach them to the bottom of my curtains at the kitchen window, so I see a lot of them.I know that are a bit ditzy, but I love them.
So everyone, I hope you enjoyed a little look at some of our feathered  wild life at the farm, as we think that they are pretty special friends to have come visiting and enjoyed sharing them  with you..
Until next time we meet,
I wish everyone well,
Cheers
Jane.

Winter ,what a lovely time of the year!

I just love winter up at the farm, I am not a summer person at all and the older I get the less and less i am  liking summer. Give me winter anytime.
There is nothing lovelier than laying in bed watching that low winter sun rise up  over a snow white  frost covered front lawn and watch it slowly melt  and everything come to life. We take our early cuppas out onto the front verandah and sit and plan all the world events and days jobs while  we sit there.
Even though it is cold ,crisp and frosty  its just right.

This photo shows it about as cold as it gets, we have only ever had snow in our area twice in my lifetime, although we do get cold nasty winds that feel like they are blowing straight off ice some winters.(Those, I don't love quite as much). But when it  is cold and chilly we have a lovely warm fire inside that we keep burning day and night and the house stays warm and cosy

We have been having some issues with this old wood fire, it is  about 30 years old now and is having a few  smoke leaking problems so we will be replacing it hopefully by next winter with a  slick new  dual purpose wood heater/cooker. This one will be relocated into an outdoor area we are making, along with our old kitchen wood cooker (which is also having a few major age related problems) , so that our outdoor entertaining time can be extended more.We decided to combine the two  fires into one dual purpose cooker/heater to be more fuel efficient. Also with the old  wood cooker outdoors, i will probably do more of my canning and food prep out there too, instead of inside where we swelter in summer.When we finally get around to doing it(or should I say saving the money to do it) I will post  the photos on the blog.
While we were up the farm this week, we had a lovely surprise, one of our sheepy mums gave birth to a very tiny sweet set of twins.

They are so cute, I just love watching their funny antics, they frolic around,leaping and jumping and just having a wonderful time.I think they are both boys, we didn't touch them, we let them be, when we go back up in a couple of weeks, we will tag and tail and mark if needed.I have a real soft spot for the black headed ones.The Dorper breed comes in two varieties, all white and black heads.Dorper Mums are fairly quiet and friendly, and we keep them even more so by hand feeding a little hay each time we are there,so that they are easier to handle.
Each year my husband  tries to grow a little patch of extra feed for the sheep, and as we only have some basic equipment(we have a scarifyer,not a plough) and he broadcasts the  fertilizer and seed by hand, we have had varying success and failures over the years. What the drought misses, the flocks of our beautiful Galah( a pretty pink and grey medium sized bird) usually get and if we are lucky enough to get anything up the kangaroos usually nibble it all off.
One of these days, we will buy the correct machinery as we can afford it and do it better.......But.....This year  we got a crop. The rain came at the right time, and my husband decided to run the scarifyer over a second time after he had thrown out the seed and the birds left it alone. So the photo below shows our little crop of rye rye corn,, We are very pleased with it considering everything.

With a little more rain predicted over the next few weeks, when spring kicks in we may have a nice little feed crop for our sheep.
While we were there this time and that rain had been predicted we went and bought 8 extra bags of fertilizer and my husband spent two days walking around our little place  throwing it around every where, then we got the predicted half inch of rain the next day, so all is good.
We had a fairly quite week, did some canning, but mainly rested and relaxed as it's been a hectic few months and were just in  need of  the break.
So..on that note,
We wish  everyone well,
Until next time
Cheers
Jane from Aus.