Backyard Birds

One of the nice things about living in Australia are the birds.  Compared to the United States, Australia just has a wide variety of colorful birds.  Here of some of the birds that most frequently come and hang out in our yard:

Cockatoos are without a doubt our most frequent visitors.  The love hanging out in the trees in my yard and in the morning they like to make a ruckus.  They are very noisy birds, which used to annoy me when I first came to Australia, but now they are my favorite bird here.  These cockatoos are about the size of a chicken and are very intelligent.  I actually know someone who has a pet cockatoo and he was able to teach it to speak English.  The clarity of it’s English was amazing.  He trained it to say "G’day Mate!", "See ya Later!", and "No Worries!" to name a few.  

My wife buys seeds from Safeway for the cockatoos to eat so they really love hanging out in our yard:

As you can also see in the above picture we have a number of pigeons that hang out in yard as well, and the cockatoos love picking on them and chasing them around the yard.  The cockatoos really are a bunch of clowns when you sit and watch them.

Here are some lorikeets that also like to frequent our yard:

That are a variety of species of lorikeet that visit our yard both these guys are definitely the most common.  Here is by far the biggest birds that come to hang out in our yard:

During the summer when the bush starts running short on water and grass to graze on the emus along with the kangaroos will start moving through the community eating food in the grass around the houses.  The emus are large, and harmless and usually just walk away when approached.  Really ugly birds, but I have taken a liking to them too. 

Since it has moved into autumn here in Australia the emus and kangaroos haven’t been hanging out in yard for quite some time now.  However, we have some new visitors I haven’t seen before:

These two species of birds I have never seen before, but have been hanging out in my yard recently.  I’m guessing they are migrating from possibly Tasmania to a warmer climate further north in maybe Queensland.  I looked in my wildlife book, but couldn’t determine what these birds are.  They are pretty birds though so hopefully they stay and continue to hang out for a while. 

Speaking of spring, my yard has really taken a turn for the better with the all the rain we have been getting down here in Victoria lately.  Take a look at my backyard, it is almost all green now:

Additionally we even have a rose bush blooming now as well:

Victoria is really weird with it’s seasons compared to the states.  Here in the fall many flowers start blooming while in the spring and summer they die.  The rains of the fall and winter time here causes all the plants to come back to life after the dry summer that scorches everything.  Our backyard and flowers are looking good, but my frontyard is still mostly brown and looks about the same from my last update on it.  Hopefully another month of rain will turn that around and maybe my fern tree will come back to life. 

It’s strange, but after all the heat and bushfires of the past summer, I’m actually looking forward to winter.  Bring it on.