feathers and quills
  • Home
  • Calligraphy
    • Calligraphy gallery 1
    • calligraphy gallery 2
    • Wedding stationery
    • Calligraphic script examples
    • calligraphy links
  • wildlife
    • wildlife gallery
    • ACT Wildlife
    • AWRC
    • wildlife links
    • Wildlife Issues
  • Photography
    • Australian Birds
    • Canadian Birds
    • Mogo Zoo
    • Photography links
  • contact me
  • Marg's Blog

Local birds

5/19/2012

3 Comments

 
Last week when i was photographing the beautiful autumn colours I happened to see some of the more common birds in Tuggeranong Town Park.
Picture
I had never seen a male Magpie lark (pee wee) posturing to another male before.  I wonder if it is a territorial thing.






        Can you tell the difference between the male and female pee wee?
        The female is on the left (below) and the male is on the right.

Picture


The magpies were feeding.  Check out this lovely worm.......







           The female magpie is on the left and the male on the right. Check out
           the nape of the neck, the male is snowy white and the female shows
           some grey.

Picture


Being at the lake of course there were water birds.  I saw Eurasian coots, Black Pacific ducks, Wood ducks, Dusky moorehens and Purple Swamphens.  there was also a Black swan

Picture



I asked my students to make a list of birds in their suburb or travels around Canberra, and this is what they came up with:    43 native species and 6 feral species.    Good job!

3 Comments
Alison Venugoban
11/27/2012 10:06:11 am

Hi Marg, love your website! I also live in Canberra (Gungahlin) and I had to smile at the picture of a male mudlark posturing to another male, since I've seen similar: we have a family of magpies that live in our area, and for the past two years they had a male pee wee living with them. Unusual for the territorial birds, except that it was obvious that the pee wee was mated to one of the group's magpies. More than that, they were both males, since they would display mounting behaviour, both taking turns on top. I wish I had gotten some photos, as unfortunately this year, another group of magpies has ousted the ones I used to watch. Bird behaviour is amazingly complex.
Alison

Reply
Marg
8/29/2017 04:28:45 am

Very interesting Alison. I have never seen pee wees mated or mounting or even living with magpies. Quite often they are in the same vicinity feeding.

There is a hollow in a tree opposite my house that is a split hollow with eastern and crimson rosellas. One year I saw a hybrid on my lawn. Very interesting. Birds are fascinating.

Reply
national bird of honduras link
8/29/2017 03:54:18 am

Very nice blog about birds.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Marg Peachey - Calligrapher and Australian Wildlife Educator

    Archives

    May 2015
    July 2013
    October 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012

    RSS Feed





    HOME

    CALLIGRAPHY
       Gallery
       Wedding stationery
       Script examples

    WILDLIFE
       Gallery
       Wildlife courses

    PHOTOGRAPHY 
       Birds
       Mogo Zoo

Proudly powered by Weebly