Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from ACM, which has journalists in every state and territory. Sign up here to get it by email, or here to forward it to a friend. Today's is written by Manning Great Lakes editor Toni Bell.
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Here at ACM, we have regular online "hangouts" with people across our network. This week, our team leader, let's call her Kathy, was being persistently interrupted, in the most beautiful way, by a whipbird just outside her window.
Whipbirds are shy creatures but their call is magical. When traffic was cut off from the main road I live on during floods, I discovered (by hearing) a tribe of whipbirds just 50 metres away in a patch of scrub.
You see, I'm a bit of a bird watcher, and I try my best to take part in the annual Great Aussie Bird Count which happens during National Bird Week - which is this week. It runs from October 17-23.
I encourage everyone to take part, even if just for the 20 minutes spent outdoors alone and listening.
Of course the most obvious birds in my backyard are crows (or they could be ravens, apparently they are hard to tell apart). The next most obvious are peewees (magpie larks). And I am working my way towards having a magpie family - so far I have three.
But it's the less obvious visitors I take most interest in. I have two butcher birds, they are small, so I assume they are young birds. They are a team and regularly swoop in for the cats' dried food.
The past few years a rather intimidating channel billed cuckoo (the largest cuckoo in the world according to Wikipedia, and also known as a storm bird) has landed and intruded in the nests of wattle birds and crows. Watching these adoptive parents pander to these very large chicks is fascinating.
We have a grey thrush shrike, a rather dull looking chap but with a beautiful, if not slightly deafening call.
Welcome swallows call our garage home, as do willy wagtails, fairy wrens tap on our bedroom window at their reflection and it's a joy to watch red bar finches descend to feast on grass heads.
This year's Great Aussie Bird Count is focused on our colourful, noisy neighbours, parrots. I have the pleasure of visits by king parrots, rosellas, galahs, corellas and of course those speedsters the rainbow lorikeets.
The Aussie Bird Count website has lots of resources for birdwatching beginners and to help identify birds. Why not give it a go?
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Toni Bell
Manning Great Lakes editor covering mastheads Manning River Times, Great Lakes Advocate, Gloucester Advocate, Wingham Chronicle and the Manning Great Lakes Extra. A journalist for 40 plus years.
Manning Great Lakes editor covering mastheads Manning River Times, Great Lakes Advocate, Gloucester Advocate, Wingham Chronicle and the Manning Great Lakes Extra. A journalist for 40 plus years.
