Checking on the Aussie Birds

Everyone is still waiting for any sign of a pip or a hatch with Xavier and Diamond’s eggs at their scrape box on the water tower on Charles Sturt University at Orange. It is now mid-afternoon on the 7th of October. Diamond has been restless but she sure is not revealing anything to anyone!

Meanwhile the week-old chicks at 367 Collins Street are growing by leaps and bounds. It was really hot today and Mum was a great ‘Mumbrella’ to keep the heat off their pink skin underneath all that white fluffy down. Mom was panting, too.

Those four are really getting stronger too. Each of them can easily sit with their neck held relatively still. It is so much easier for the parents to feed them.

This is Mom feeding.

The baby or the 4th hatch is doing great too. There it is on the right. Their eyes are open wide. Such cuties. Just notice how much of the scrape box they take up today. We will compare this with them next week. It should be interesting.

This is Dad feeding. If you have trouble recognizing them, one of the best ways is to look behind the legs and between the tail. Mum has lots of long dirty feathers from brooding the chicks. Dad doesn’t. Dad has more yellow on the eyes and is, of course, much smaller. But the feathers behind the legs are a giveaway that it is Mum.

The Port Lincoln Osprey Cam was offline for a good part of the early morning. I do not know when the three osplets were fed but each had large crops when the stream returned. I think they must have had a really good feed.

If you are wondering how Little Bob is doing, well that ‘ps’ of his in the image below says it all.

Everyone is waiting for a fish, snoozing in the sunshine of a beautiful Australian afternoon. It is 17 degrees C and the winds are blowing at 16 kph.

The Sydney Sea Eagles are incredibly beautiful. We are getting near and nearer to branching. This nest has been full of wonderful surprises this year, just like the Port Lincoln Osprey Nest.

Lady Hawk did a 5 minute video of some of the cuteness that these two WBSE have gotten into. Have a look:

I took a drive on a very hot day to check out the number of Pelicans and Cormorants still around and to see the geese come into the fields. They begin around 15:00 and continue to dusk.

Manitoba has one-third of North America’s American White Pelicans during the summer season. There are often 100 or more on our Red River near the dam at Lockport Heritage Park. Today, there were only four Pelicans and two Cormorants. There were, however, quite a few Greater Yellow Legs. The birds were back lit and more than a football field away so the images are not as good as I had hoped.

This is a non-breeding immature Greater Yellowlegs.

The Double-crested Cormorant had just landed on the water and was drying off its wings. There were fish jumping and everyone will eat well today, if they already haven’t.

There are always lots of Ring-billed Gulls.

I have one last thing to share with you. Sandhill Cranes. I missed seeing the hundreds of them when they landed south of Winnipeg about a month ago as they began their migration. On Saturday, during Ferris Akel’s tour, he filmed a number of Sandhill Cranes at Montezuma. They are such beautiful birds. He has posted that edited video. Here is the link:

Thank you so much for joining me. I had hoped to have hatch news for you but we wait, just like Xavier does. Take care. See you soon.

Thank you to the following for their streaming cams where I take my screen shots: The Port Lincoln Osprey Project, The Falcon Cam at Charles Sturt University at Orange and Cilla Kinross, Sea Eagles @ Birdlife Australia Discovery Centre, and 367 Collins Street Falcons by Mirvac.