Crazy Eyes - (Satin Bowerbirds)

Here are some images of the heads of Satin Bowerbirds.

One cannot help but be fascinated by these birds when they are so active in one's backyard.

A female Satin Bowerbird.
The eye colour shows blue in this image (no red),
but that might be a factor of the light (at the time this shot was taken)
or possibly it might even be a factor of the season.
Note the dark beak of the female
and the yellow flecked feathers on the throat.

Bowerbirds are not easily ignored.

This one is an immature male.
It is developing the bone-coloured beak.
Its head and neck feathering is smoother (less harsh markings)
than the female and juvenile birds.

Besides, who can ignore these crazy eyes?

The Male, in prime condition like this is not to be ignored.
He dominates everything in the backyard,
with the exception of the Pied Currawongs.
These birds are more likely to hang around
(than the Currawongs),
so they end up getting the "lion's share" of fruit on the table.

Satin Bowerbird's Bower

My friend Joan Freere rang me this morning to tell me about a Satin Bowerbird's bower which she found in the Robertson Nature Reserve this morning. Joan was in there, doing some weeding, as a volunteer, to help maintain the Nature Reserve in good condition.
My brother, Brendan, and I went in at lunchtime, and Brendan took the following snaps.

Bower as first approached.
Look for the blue "decorations".
The Bower is just to the left of the blue items.
(click to enlarge image)

A slightly closer shot.
Here you can clearly see the decorations are in front of the "Bower".
Blue decorations include the Bowerbird's favourite,
the blue tail feathers of Crimson Rosellas.
This Bower also has some Rosella wing feathers,
which show some light blue colour.
(Rosella wing "flight feathers" are more curved than tail feathers).
There are also some pieces of blue plastic (which they also love).

*****

Here is a straight-on photo of the Bower itself.
(Click to enlarge).
The "U-shaped" structure has two tall sides, and
the central part of the Bower is a flattened "floor".
The sides are curved upwards and over,
nearly, but not quite, meeting over the top.
Another feature of this Bower is that
there are many fruit of a local plant,
the blue-flowered Solanum pungetium, placed in the bower.
But the fruit are green, not blue.
Hmm, interesting, but a bit of a puzzle.
These rounded fruits are clearly visible on the ground
in the very foreground of this image.
(You need to have enlarged the image to see them.)

*****

And just to remind you about the amazing "Blue Bird" itself
here is one of many shots I was able to take yesterday at home,
looking out from a partially opened back door.
The male Bowerbird is generally pretty nervous,
but yesterday, he was showing off, particularly to one female.
Here he is on the feeder, near an orange.

It is worth clicking on this image, to see it better.
Just about everything about this amazing bird is blue.
His eye is violet blue, (with red veining)
and in this particular shot you can see he has
a bright blue ring around his eye.
You can see the amazing sheen on his feathers.
He is so "reflective" that he generally looks shiny black.

The yellow background colour comes from some wattles in the far distance.

*****

Post Script:
Brendan took with him several pieces of blue plastic, as a "test".
He left them on the ground
some 30 metres distant from the bower.
We walked away, and came back some 15 minutes later.
Both blue objects had been collected by the male Bowerbird
and placed amongst his other decorations
in the front of his bower.
One was a small blue bottle cap,
the other a flat piece of blue plastic.
The photos were taken first,
so those objects are not in the photos above.

I find it amazing that the Bowerbird is so "alert"
to new blue objects in his "territory"
that he immediately collected these "new" blue objects
and placed them within his bower, within just a few minutes.

I would remind you that the habitat in the Nature Reserve
is very dense vegetation -
tall trees and vines, with dense shrubbery.
The two blue objects Brendan left there
were not placed close to the bower,
well, not in line of sight from the bower, anyway.

A Currawong lines up a meal

These images were taken on 12 December 2009.

In December last year, there was a particularly wet day. An adult Pied Currawong was looking for food, as it had a hungry chick. Given the weather it probably needed something to cheer itself up, when not having to feed the chick. (They supposedly feed chicks high protein meals of insects and small birds and lizards).

This bird was on the lookout for some sweet food for itself. It spotted a pear which I had placed out on the bird feeder table.

What's this?
I'll check it out with my left eye, first.

Now from straight ahead.
I'll give it another look, with the right eye.

Having decided that it could not believe its luck, it moved in close.

If you are getting stared at like this, by a Currawong,
then there's only one thing going to happen.
You're on the menu.
Got it.
Needless to say, the Currawong flew off - barely able to believe its luck.

Yet another shot of a Bowerbird.

This morning I realised I had run out of Apples to feed the Satin Bowerbirds and Pied Currawongs and the Lewin's Honeyeater.
Shock Horror!

I decided to try an Orange.
It was a nice big juicy Orange, but as I personally do not like Oranges (too acidic for my preference) I was sceptical about how the birds would react.

Silly Me.

The birds were all over the two half oranges in no time flat.
They pecked it, they drank the juice, and even had a bit of a peck at some of the skin.

Click to enlarge the image.

Anyway, I took another image of the male Bowerbird (through the Kitchen Window, yet again). But this shot is a bit better than the best one I showed you a few days ago. I adjusted the camera settings somewhat to compensate for the ultra dark plumage of the bird. Consequently he is showing more of the famous glossy plumage.

Blue Bird (Male Satin Bowerbird)

The adult male Satin Bowerbird who visited me this morning is a wonderful creature. The more so when seen in full sun. The glossiness of his feathers is amazing. And so are his blue eyes!

Here he is staring straight at me,
while I am behind the Kitchen window looking at him.
These birds tend to be shy, and are wary of camera lenses.
(Click to enlarge image)

Having decided that I am no threat to him
he starts to peck at the half apple on the Bird Feeder.
(Click to enlarge image)

Note the eye colour. Also the ivory-coloured beak, which is one of the "changes" which one can use to detect younger males which have not quite matured into the "Blue Bird" phase. If you see a "green bird" with that colour beak, it is definitely a male, about to change to the fully mature plumage.

St Francis of the Bird Feeder? Not in Hi-Vis!

My brother, Brendan, will have to lose the "Hi-Vis" shirt if he hopes to charm the Lewin's Honeyeater to take food from his hands.
In fact, the bird was fairly relaxed in his presence, and moved in to feed on the Melon, while Brendan was only one and a half metres away.

Here you can see the Lewin assessing any risks before moving in..
And down it goes, with the brush-tongue lapping up the juice.
For most Honeyeaters, the juice is of more interest than the fruit tissue.
Several days ago I showed the Brush Wattlebird "lapping" the juice
from the outside of the Melon, rather than pecking at it,
as the Bowerbirds do.

Birds on the Feeder

A friend of mine had planned to come over today, because I had told her about my Bowerbirds, and she said she had never seen one (presumably she means "up close enough to recognise"). I feel sure everybody in the Southern Highlands must have seen a Bowerbird at some stage, but perhaps not. Certainly in Robertson and other highlands villages close to the escarpment, they are common, and gardeners regard them as pests.
Anyway, this afternoon, on schedule the birds started coming in for the fruit platter on display on my back deck. This is the "Feeder" which my brother has built. Did I say he is very proud of how well it works?
Well, the first to arrive today was the "Blue Bird" - the adult male Satin Bowerbird. He was very wary of me, and so I had to use a long lens through a partially opened doorway, to get any sort of shot at all.

This green bird is more relaxed and less "flighty" than the Blue Bird.
This bird is a juvenile of indeterminate sex.

With a beak full of banana, it is lining up already for another grab.

Here we go!
Note the yellow gape, indicating its relatively young age.
Here is a Brush Wattlebird on a juicy piece of watermelon, on the feeder.
It is licking juice from the fruit, not "eating" the fruit.
Here it is, in heavily zoomed image, with its brush tongue out,
wiping over the fruit, to collect the juice.
When the larger birds are feeding, the Lewin's Honeyeater hangs around,
waiting for the table to be clear of the competition.
While it loses out in size, it makes up for it with persistence.
Anyway, if my friend does come over next week, I am sure there will be more Bowerbirds for her to see.

New Bird Feeder

My brother Brendan is not a subtle person, and he had left me in no doubt that he disliked my amateurish design of the bird feeding tables I had built. I like him, none-the-less, despite his directness. Even he liked looking at the array of birds which came to my old bird feeder tables.

Well, this week he turned up with his trailer, topped with a 3 metre long branch of a tree, which he had meticulously planed down on the top and bottom sides. I was being given a new "Bird Feeder" (whether I wanted it or not).

Anyway, after a few days working up in the ceiling, in cramped conditions, reinforcing my old (very old and very damaged) "horse-hair plaster" (actually plaster sheeting with sisal mixed in), I decided Brendan ought be given some respite, so we set about installing his dream bird feeder (at my house).

Brendan had found a huge fallen tree at Bodalla, following a recent storm. It had been cut into sections by the people who had cleared the road. Brendan had grabbed one three and a half metre branch, and taken it home to trim it up and "thickness" it.

He was impressed by the size of this fallen "Spotted Gum"
Corymbia maculata
It was 900mm diameter at about 4 metres above ground level
(the point where it had been cut).
The "root ball" is over 4 metres tall and wide.
The tree had no tap root, and only shallow roots.

Today we installed this beam across two posts on my deck which I had originally left longer than the others, for the purpose of basing bird feeders on. Perfect.

Using two long coach bolts, and heavy drills, the new feeder is now fixed onto the posts of the deck and rail assembly. Glued and screwed off, for secure fixing, with a water-proofing membrane above the tops of the posts.

Next came the "branches" for the birds to land on. These have been fitted into holes drilled into the beam. I have added a further "approach perch", following a successful trial of one dead branch with quite small branches. The Bowerbirds like this, as do the local Lewin's Honeyeaters in particular. They are the smallest birds to use my feeder table, and seem to be relatively nervous, so appreciate some "protective branches" through which to approach the table.

While I was taking the photos of the first load of fruit on the new "feeder"
a Lewin's Honeyeater came in to test out the new feeder.

We kept with my original technique of up-turned screws on which to fix the fruit. In this case, we chopped the heads off "3 inch" screws, and drilled 3.5mm drill holes (the diameter of the shank of the screws), added a dob of "Liquid Nails" as both glue and water sealant, and tapped the screws in (upside down). This means that fruit can easily be fixed on the spikes by twisting it down on the screw thread.

Judging from recent weeks of observation with different fruits, even Currawongs cannot remove most fruit from such screws, at least until they have been pecked down considerably, especially if you remove the stalks of soft-fruited pears. Bananas are a bit too soft to remain there for long, however, as they are very popular with the Lewin's Honeyeaters, Bowerbirds and Currawongs. Watermelons are highly successful too, and with their firm rind, they last perfectly until all coloured flesh has been pecked away. At 99 cents per kilo, they are affordable bulk "bird food".

Lewin's Honeyeater with beak full of banana flesh.

The wind was very strong today, so the Bowerbirds did not come in for their late afternoon feeding frenzy today. So tomorrow morning we shall put out the remaining fruit again, and see how the Bowerbirds adapt to the new feeder.