Birdlife

There is a fair amount of feathered activity around the garden. Most of it migrates to the pond at some stage of the day. They can be a bit hard to photograph, some are a little skittish but mostly I am way too slow! Fascinating to watch the interaction between them all as, for the most part, they dont take too much notice of us so go about life doing what birds do.

I have counted what I think are 3 or 4 different breeds of finches. They are gorgeous little birds and are my excuse for letting weeds seed, well, it sounds good!

The plovers are the paddock watchdogs and are never far away. They let all life here know when to lock up the babies there is a hawk on the prowl! They have striking markings and from the front look like they are wearing a tux. There are a couple of pair and the odd stray. Magpies! We have about 5 who visit yearly during summer and hang around for a couple of months. They are fairly placid and I must admit to liking their melodious tone.

Then there are the shags! Two in particular, one which comes to visit regularly and the other I have only now and then. There are lots of frogs and tadpoles in the pond, though I dare say, not as many as there used to be...

The finches come to the vege garden in the Winter to clean up any left-over seeds. Often they get lucky and there is a sunflower head full of seeds stuck to the post for them to enjoy. Swallows like to sun themselves on the pergola. They are the cutest birds! Very messy if allowed to nest however.

Pukeko's must be amongst the baddest (dare I say dumbest) birds! They have the most gorgeous colouring, beautiful to look at, are very comical but they are bad! Bad! They wreak havoc on anything that doesn't slap them back and will happily rip out plants by the roots, bad! They have been observed stealing baby ducklings from around the pond, grrrr, which makes me sure that their patch of white bum-fluff was put there as a target!

Another bad-jelly bird also the most beautifully coloured is the kingfisher. We have a pair here and they sit on the willow tree above the pond once or twice a week. Unfortunately my camera doesnt allow a photograph close enough to show those stunning colours but it does give the sillohette so theres a bit to see.