Badger Galore
Staying ‘Up Over’ for a while.
Fine feathered friends.
Just a few feathered visitors who popped by today...
Give it a rest!
So...for the last two days we have been tormented by a constant, screeching bird call. I thought it was a young magpie begging for food from its parents. It wasn't a magpie but it was a juvenile bird persistently calling to be fed. It turned out to be a young Channel-billed Cuckoo.
The Channel-billed Cuckoo is the largest cuckoo in the World. They can grow up to 70 cm in length and can have a wingspan of over a metre. The adults migrate from New Guinea and Indonesia down the east coast of Australia where the females lay eggs in the nests of other birds, usually those of Magpies, Ravens, Butcher Birds and Currawongs. The young cuckoo does not push the other eggs or chicks out of the nest but tends to monopolise the attention of the host parents and the other fledglings usually starve.
Our young Channel-billed Cuckoo was being fed by a pair of Currawongs that were half its size.
A quick possum post.
So...Jnr, unable to access any roof space anymore, is sleeping mostly in the first possum box during the day. The new box still remains unoccupied for now. He has been coming every night for his 'breakfast' recently and grabs our offerings very greedily. Sometimes it is not even properly dark and he is out leering at us ready to eat.
Galore visits every few nights and is much more gracious in her acceptance.
We hear other possums about, rattling across the shed or Frogknot roof or their rasping calls in the bush around us but they don't venture near Blue Moon...well, not when we are around to see them.
I am not sure how many we have close to us but one night I did see and hear five in various places nearby.