White Winged Chough


This morning we had some uncommon visitors to our garden. My daughter alerted me to their presence and had noted them due to their numbers and red eyes. 


They appear to be black and I could have easily mistaken them as Currawongs at a glance. we grabbed our book and looked them up to find they are white-winged choughs. With the white showing when their wings are fanned. We saw a group of 10 inside our garden a few more outside close by on the roadside.


As I was on the way to school at the time it wasn't plausible to get any photos but when I arrived home I could hear a young calling so grabbed my Camera and headed down to the reserve. I find the uncommon family structure of these birds and their protective behaviours extraordinary!  It intrigues me. There was one young and 4 more mature birds foraging in these photos, a much smaller group than we had originally seen and the original group had more young members.

There is a lot of cropping in these image so they are not the nicest quality, here follows a series of photos where one of the mature birds gives the youngster a seed. Its too big to swallow and too tough to break so it gets abandoned.







Soon again the youngster squawks for something better.


While I was taking these photos my neighbour poked his head over the fence and we had a good old chat, soon he was joined by his wife and more chatting ensued. During all this we spotted a noisy friar bird nest with a pair tending their young very close by, I'll share photos of them soon. I'm so blessed to have such natural  goodness in my life and virtually on my doorstep. x

Comments

  1. Tammy, I have never seen those birds before or perhaps I have and thought they were Currawongs. I have a giveaway on my blog for two Australian wildlife books for two winners if you or any of your readers would like to enter http://goinggreyandslightlygreen.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/australian-wildlife-books-giveaway.html#comment-form. The books were written by a classmate of mine who is a wild life enthusiast and when I was talking to her on the phone the other day she said a Willy Wagtail had just paid her a visit and she had spent the morning with her camera trying to take some photos of an elusive Kingfisher. She kindly gave me a couple of books so I thought someone who likes Aussie wildlife might like to go in the draw for them.

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