She is small, not much bigger than a sparrow, but there's no mistaking her for such a drab bird. She is mostly balck and white, with splashes of brilliant yellow, and her eye is bright white.
Her nest is tucked in the back of the grevillea, squashed up against the house. At first I thought it was died-back branches, but she nestled down into it, and became almost invisble. The spiky plant will presumably help keep predators away, even though she is barely 2 feet of the ground.
The small bowl of twigs, when she vacates her hiding place, reveals an unexpected inside - a thick white wall of fluff, perfect for cradling delicate eggs, of which she appears to have a pair.
She spends a fair amound of time out of the nest, and I don't know if this is normal, or if she isn't really that into being a mother. I guess we'll find out in a week or so, when there will either be small tweety things in the nest, or it will become simply an abandoned bowl of twigs.
We get a lot of birds around here. On any given day, as well as my little nesting friend (a New Holland Honeyeater) and about a dozen of her kin, I am likely to see any or all of the following (and I'm sure I'm forgetting some, AND there are more than I don't see, and can't identify by song):
- Masked Lapwing
- Laughing Kookaburra
- Rainbow Lorikeet
- Crimson Rosella
- Magpie
- Willie Wagtail
- Black faced Cuckoo-shrike
- Red Wattlebird
- Some sort of honeyeater, probably a Litle Wattlebird, but its hard to get a good look
- Sparrows
- Magpie Lark
- Indian Myna
- Crested Pigeon
- Spotted Dove
- Pelicans
- Silver Gulls (the proper name for those annoying seagulls - the Australian ones at least)
There are also Black Swans and a variety of other water birds in the lake about 3 blocks away, and the neighbour has chickens. It is never quiet around here.
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