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.

Pest control

Here on the east  coast of  N.S.W we have a major pest. The Indian Minor Bird.
It makes such a mess everywhere,.When we put out dog biscuits for our furry friends they come in droves and raid it, they have no fear at all and then  they leave their white filthy poop every where they go.

They  nest in a huge palm tree up in our back yard(after hunting any nice birds away, they steal their nests and raise their own dirty noisy babies.We bought the owl on the table(supposed to scare them), what a joke, they hang round it all day.
I peg my wash up under here often, and am forever finding streaks of bird poop all over everything.
We recently re-oiled our back wooden table that we love to use all the time,  but within 24 hours it was covered. The poop  seems to have an acid in it as it marks the table badly and is very difficult to remove.

So we had no alternative to cover  it semi-permanently, and only remove if we know we are going to entertain. You can also see in this photo a previous attempt at control.We placed a piece of fishing line across the top of each chair so that they couldn't land on them(they used to sit on the top of the chair and poop and it would run down all over the chairs) This technique stopped them for about 6 months.The cover is ugly, but we have no choice.

The  other major issue we have with them is the garden.
They always strip our strawberry crops, and they pull out any seedlings and new plants that you put in the garden. Brian has had enough, they are the worst this year that they have ever been(we think it's because we spend so much time away(and so does the dog) that they are getting more and more brazen.
This  time when he re-dug the strawberry pants, he decided to at least cover one bath tub full to see how it goes.

We used some black poly drip irrigation tube which we cut to 1.1 mtre lengths and teck screwed to the sides of the old tub in a hoop. We used 4 of them and then covered with bird netting. Simple but hopefully effective.
We had such big help on this project, I thought I would add a picture of them.

Brian  also prepared the beds for corn,cucumbers  and beans while he was home this time. He has planted 2 beds of corn, 3 beds of bush beans and one bed of bush cucumbers.

As soon as he planted the seeds, those rotten Indian Minors were there , scratching and digging, trying to find the seeds....So I looked for a solution.I had read on a few of the canning sites that I frequent that the extra canning rings that we accumulate are a good bird deterrent, We strung up a few lengths of fishing line with rings hanging off them, and some aluminiun foil strips hanging off that to wave in the breeze.

Did that deter them?

......no not likely, so then today we moved onto stage two,covering all the beds with bird netting and placing lots of whirly windmill things and shiny tinsel and twisty things, to hopefully scare them away. Tomorrow we will see it it worked( but I am not holding my breath)

We don't have this issue at the farm, the Indian Minors  thank god  haven't made it out that far west yet.......but they will eventually.
So until next time I will be on Bird patrol.
All the best to everyone,
Cheers,
Jane.

Busy,Busy,Busy...now taking a breather.!

We have just had a really busy full on 10 days, Our  youngest daughter had to go to Adelaide for a few days and hubby had to work so we offered to take little miss Holly,now three up to the farm for a week or so.
We picked her up down near Wollongong(about 3 hours south  and then drove back to Newcastle and then after picking up the trailer fully loaded with stuff for the farm and the two dogs we set off for the four hour drive out west  to the farm
Immediately upon arrival she bolted out of the car and was amazed at the sheep,she just couldn't take her eyes off them.

It was freezing cold when we arrived late in the afternoon so we got the fires going and unpacked the car.(The farm is a new experience for Holly as she had only been there overnight once before when she was much younger).
The next morning my husband  had to assemble a small motorbike(now christened Motor Mike) for ever more.We had bought it cheaply on ebay just so that my husband could save his legs a little rounding up the sheep and other jobs around the place.

We have found it to be wonderful, It is a little on the small size, but has a 125 cc engine, so gets along quite well.
Holly was given the responsibility of feeding the dry biscuits to the dogs, a job she took very seriously.Anytime we would  wonder where she was, we just had to look for the dogs, because they were always together.

She just loves the dogs, has done since she was a little baby.
She owns the black labrador, her name is Josie, she calls her Josie Jo..
Brian  went to clean out one of the stock troughs and Holly and the dogs just had to help him empty it and refill with clean water. She was cute, got soaking wet and was covered in mud and slime,she told me she was being Peppa Pig and was "jumping in Muddy Puddles".The Kelpie belongs to our oldest daughter.

Our oldest daughter also came to the farm to visit  while we were there too and brought her baby girl Claudia with here. We had a lovely time with the little girls together and also some more cousins from in town came out to visit  as well, it was like we were running a day care centre.

We had hair braiding, chocolate cup cake making(and Bowl Licking), and a first photo of Nanny and Poppy with both of their grand daughters. holly also got to do some other exciting things, like sitting up on Poppy's  big blue tractor, and feeding the little pony  at the next door neighbours,Going to the playground in town, cutting and pasting pictures and playing with play dough.( what more could a little girl want.)

While we were there Brian went up the hill with his trusty old blue tractor and cut a load of good wood, while he was up there I took little Miss for a big walk "Up the Mountain" and we gathered many pockets full of pretty  stones along the track.

Our little "feed" block that we had shut off from the sheep had progressed quite well so we let the

sheep onto it for an extra bit of feed for them, they thoroughly enjoyed it. Elsewhere around the garden spring  is rapidly creeping up on us, the apricot tree was bursting into blossom and the hardenberger"native Sarsparella' was in flower, all is looking good.Brian also weeded the rhubarb and set up an old bathtub to make a new garden the next time we are up.
We had a day with the sheep while we were there too,We keep some of our sheep on Brian's brothers bigger block of land. All the new lambs needed tailing,tagging and marking, The adult sheep all needed drenching and checking over and the alpaca(which belongs to my Brother in law) needed drenching and his toenails trimmed.Holly just adored all the baby lambs, and had a wonderful morning followed by a picnic with the sheep(which was just a cuppa in the paddock)

On our final day, we travelled to Dubbo to catch up with my elderly mum and my sister(who just happened to be visiting our Mum also. We had a lovely catch up, lunch out and a bit of grocery shopping for great Nanny.My mum is nearly 89 and doing very well.It was lovely she got to have the day with her Great grand daughter.

We had a huge week, feel like we never stopped, we are totally exhausted, but in the best possible way. Hopefully my next posts will be more farm related, but I just had to share our wonderful week with everyone. We travelled home the day following the Dubbo excursion, and never heard a peep from our little princess, Holly's Mum had loaned us her portable DVD player, and she watched Pepper Pig and Wiggles all the way home,(with a lunch break in the middle). The dogs happily sat either side  of her.

So until next time, best wishes to all,
and cheers from Jane in Aus.