My Burra Family: June 2017

The days are getting shorter. There is a definite nip in the air and a certain harmony descends upon the Tapas Bar.
Summer has finished along with the breeding season. Autumn brings out the flowers and the best in my birds. The lack of testosterone & babies and life slips back into normality.
I laugh when neighbours comment I go a long way to spoil my birds. The flowers aren’t really for the birds as much as they are for the camera. Sure a few may enjoy the nectar

I'm Mal the Noisy Miner

Hassling all the other birds is stressful

Sometimes I need to just stop & smell the flowers & chill.

but mostly they are there to add colour & texture to my photos. And if I’m really, really lucky, and by that I do mean really lucky, I might get a photo of a bird holding a flower in its beak. This is an unusual action for a bird and makes for a bloody good photo.
In the six years the Tapas Bar has been going I’ve only taken 1 photo of one of my Kookas holding a flower and looking at the camera.

A photo from years ago.

A smile that just melts hearts.

That’s why I live in hope of getting another.

And that hope was rewarded a few weeks ago. A matter of times actually. I couldn't believe my eyes, and all within a few days.

Ketut the Spotted Dove is always trying to win Rhonda's heart

A bouquet of flowers might just do it.

The last thing you would expect to see in a Kookaburra's mouth is a flower

That is unless that Kookaburra is Button.

She's a new age Kookaburra

That's not right. It's missing something.
A Kookaburra

I'm betting you're smiling as you look at this.
She brings joy to the world, my little Button does.

Every now and then I treat my Kookaburras to bacon snakes. I have to tie them off to the Tapas Bar otherwise they would be gone in a flash. I laughed out loud last week when I set a few up. I was standing next to the Tapas Bar after just “fixing” them, when Boss flew in. He wasn’t missing the opportunity to grab one before the others, and rushed in. He flew in, scooped one up in his beak and in one smooth action took off. The bacon snake pulled tight and sent Boss flying arse over tit into the yonder. Check out my video at the end of this blog.

OH NO!

BLOODY BACON SNAKES!

I JUST KNOW THIS ISN'T GOING TO END WELL!

BUGGER!

This isn't going to look good.

The glamour birds of the Tapas Bar are Brad, Angelina & son Shiloh, a family of Satin Bowerbirds. I haven’t seen Angelina for a couple of years but Brad & Shiloh are daily visitors. Shiloh is the spitting image of his mum, identical really. The only way to tell the young boys from the girls is a close look at those amazing blue eyes. If you look closely at Shiloh’s eye, there is a slight ring of mauve around the pupil, whereas the girls are blue all the way.

At about age 5 or 6 he’ll start to change into his adult plumage and by seven, should look identical to his dad Brad. Shiloh is nearly four and looking at the photo below, is starting to show interest in blue things.

Young boys like to copy what dad does

So why shouldn't birds be any different?

Son, we're Bowerbirds.

We decorate.

That's what we do.

And no bower is a respectable bower

without a generous selection of blue.

If the Bowerbirds are the glamour group, Cedrick & Daphne the Lorikeets are the ones that add colour & excitement to the Tapas Bar. They’re great. These guys are the real characters of the bird world. It would be nice to say that they were lovers not fighters but…… Bwahahahahahaha, that’s not them. They’re not known for their patience or understanding, but I love them all the same.