Birds of summer

Learning to watch the seasons

A movement in the paddock caught my eye as I was walking up to the chook pen. I glanced across and caught sight of a black-faced cuckoo-shrike flying from the ground up to a tree branch. The first cuckoo-shrike I have seen here. An attractive grey bird with a distinctive black head. I look up my bird app and discover they are seasonally nomadic in some areas but at times they are found almost everywhere in Australia. They spread out across the continent during spring and summer. I also learn that in some places they are called shufflewings because of the way they shuffle their wings after landing. Something about the name appeals to me and I think maybe I’ll use it henceforth. Although I’m not sure I’ll manage it; cuckoo-shrike is deeply embedded in by birding knowledge.

The shufflewing (nah, it doesn’t feel quite right) is not the only bird to have recently appeared here. A pair of sacred kingfishers showed up in mid November. For a couple of weeks, we would see the two of them hanging around the garden, then their habits changed and for weeks we only saw one at a time. The female has a cream breast and an azure back. The male’s breast is more orange and his back is so brightly blue that it is almost iridescent. The pair take turns in sitting on the nest, which explains why we suddenly only saw one at a time. I don’t know where their nest is, but I watch them hunting. They sit on a perch - the trellises in the veggie patch are favoured spots, as are the satellite dishes (for TV and internet) and the garden gate posts. They sit still. Perfectly still. Not so much as a flicker. Then they fly off, swoop to the ground and return to a perch. Almost always there is a worm hanging from the bird’s black beak. Occasionally a caterpillar. The said meal disappears with a few quick snaps of the beak. They resume sitting still. Swoop. Perch. Eat. Repeat. I time how long they sit in between swoops. It’s rarely more than a minute and a half. Sometimes it’s only ten seconds. They inevitably return to the perch with something in to eat. They simply do not miss. Sometimes they fly up to ten metres from the perch to the spot where they grab their prey. They rarely land on the ground; if they do it is only for a second or two. Their eyesight must be phenomenal. I’m waiting for the day when they come out with their young and begin teaching them to hunt. At least I guess that is what will happen. Time will tell.

The kookaburras have returned. Their laughter fills the pre-dawn quiet, calling the sun up. Something about their call is quintessentially Australian, but they are an introduced species here in the west. Their natural range is restricted to the eastern side of the mainland; in Western Australia and Tasmania they are invaders; a pest even. I much prefer the endemic sacred kingfishers, even if they don’t laugh out loud.

I’m honing in on the kingfishers’ nest. I have seen them chasing off magpies in the karri trees by the side of the house. It looks like defensive action, so I am guessing the nest is close by. Here on the western side of the continent, they nest in trees. Elsewhere, they nest in an arboreal termite mound. According to my bird book at least. The Australian Museum’s website doesn’t mention this east-west difference, but rather says their nests are usually a burrow in a termite mound, river bank or hollow branch. The museum makes no geographical claims as to what happens where. The museum also says sacred kingfishers occasionally prey on crustaceans and very rarely fish, which means they might be kingfishers in name but aren’t really fishers by nature.

Still, the sacred kingfishers are my current favourite birds, I think. Although maybe it’s the spotted pardalotes, which are also newly arrived summer visitors. They are tiny and beautiful and only occasionally seen. They flutter around the windows. I’m not sure if they are fighting their reflections or hunting spiders or looking for a nesting site. I don’t mind. I love seeing them. They’re intriguing little birds, spending most of their lives high in the tree canopy but nesting in mounds on the ground and sometimes in hanging baskets. In truth, the ones I see near the house are probably looking for the hanging baskets the previous occupants had in abundance. I’m not a hanging basket sort of a gardener, perhaps to the pardalotes’ disappointment.

Image from Pixabay (valda242art)

The restless flycatchers are another seasonal visitor. They move quickly, restlessly, earning their name. They don’t sit still long enough for me to focus the binoculars on them. They skip and hop and fly and swirl around, hunting on the wing. The cabbage white butterflies have no chance. Tree martins also swoop through the air hunting. Or maybe they are fairy martins, or perhaps the birds I see are a mix of both species. They fly fast. I mean FAST. Too fast for me to pin in the binoculars. They are acrobatic, dipping and diving; a rollercoaster ride through the air. Soaring high. They occupy the three dimensions of space so much more than we do, with our feet planted firmly on the ground. I wonder what is up there. What insects are flying around up there? Or are the martins just enjoying the air on their bodies and the feeling of flying? We don’t often ascribe motivations such as joy and fun to animals that we watch, but why not? Is it too anthropomorphic to imagine things other than people have fun? (No dog owner thinks non-human animals can’t enjoy a game. Why not birds? Yes, I know, they have small brains for their size and much of their neural capacity is devoted to sight and movement, but indulge me here. Let’s give them a little joy.)

Just after Christmas, a bonus present arrives. Not one or two but three sacred kingfishers hanging around the garden. The male and the female and a juvenile! The baby is smaller than the parents and its colouring slightly paler. It takes the same stance, sitting atop the trellis. Over coming days I see it often, sometimes with one parent, but sometimes alone. It sits for long periods before it swoops to the ground, far longer than either parent. Its hunts are not as clean. It spends longer on the ground extracting the prey. Sometimes it begs a parent for a morsel. Sometimes they oblige. But increasingly it is out alone, learning its trade by practice. I suspect the parents are already incubating another clutch of eggs in their hidden nest burrow.

One day while I watch the juvenile kingfisher through the window, I see another bird I haven’t seen here before. A Western spinebill. Not one, but two. A pair. The male is burnt orange with a strong black band around his neck and white on his head and throat; the female similar, but duller. The same day, I see a willy wagtail up the top of the block near the forest. Again, a first sighting for me here. None of these birds were here at the start of November. I don’t know how long they’ll stay.

Then, today, I saw a kite circling high above, riding the air. I saw it almost every day when we first moved here but hadn’t seen it for months and months, yet here it is again. We have, I realise, come full circle. Our first lap of the sun in this house completed; our first year of watching the rhythms, of learning this land.

See you outside,

Jill