A reinforced nest. 1943.

Can you imagine what Mr. F. Watt, of Rockbank thought upon finding this nest on his property in 1942? A nest weighing 20lb (over 9kg) and made completely of wire is a pretty impressive effort.

Portland Guardian 29 Jul 1943 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article64386007

Even more impressive to me is that it included fencing wire. 12 gauge fencing wire is like coat hanger wire. I wouldn’t have liked to tangle with this bird. It must have had an extremely strong beak to be able to build a nest completely out of wire. I would not want it to decide my finger would make a tasty morsel!

I wonder if the nest was still in use when the branch holding it gave way or if it had been previously abandoned?

I would expect that there was a fair risk of death by lightning strike if you were sitting in a metal nest high in a tree on a dark and stormy night… bzzzzt… squawk!

I would really love to have seen that nest, I wonder if it is still around, shoved in the back of an old farm shed?

Australian Magpies are funny birds, they have a great call and are quite bold and intelligent, although during breeding season some can become highly aggressive and swoop passers-by in an attempt to drive them off. They don’t just swoop, they actually make contact and can be quite dangerous. You know when it is that time of year as many bike riders can be seen on the tracks with large, comical eye stickers on the back of their helmets and cable ties or wires sticking up into the air all in an attempt to stop the birds attacking them.

Here is a short clip of a one calling, it is not the entirety of a magpies repertoire but I couldn’t find a clip with their whole call! Bugger. The clips were mainly people feeding them and yacking their heads off in the background… grrrr… 😦

The couch potato naturalist.

On Friday afternoon I was sitting in my customary spot on the couch doing a bit of aimless blog surfing research and was disturbed by a familiar noise…. oooooom…

In the years we have lived here in the valley we have amassed quite a large family of Bronzewing pigeons. When we first moved in there were very few of them and they were extremely wary of people. If they were in the garden and saw you moving in the house there would be an explosion of noise and what appeared to be a short-legged drab chicken would whirr into the air and disappear amazingly quickly.

Western Mail 4 Mar 1898 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article33151083

These mainly nondescript pigeons have a very unexpected call, they make a very deep OOOOOM…… OOOOOM…. It is astounding that such a bird can make this large noise. Before we insulated our corrugated metal roof, the birds would perch up on the peak and their calls would echo loudly through the entire house. On a clear, still day, their calls can be heard for an amazingly long distance.

Actually, it took us a while to work out what was making the noise! They were so shy that they were rarely seen, and only called when safely hidden away.

They sound horribly similar to an excited cow, a noise we often hear coming from the nearby paddocks, and to hear that call coming from right nearby made us wonder what kind of creature was hiding in the bushes! To this day we still call them the Moo birds.

As you can see by the 1898 newspaper article they were heavily hunted and I can see why. They are quite plump and if you were out looking for food for the family one would make a good meal. They are quite silly too. It they stay still they are almost invisible, but as soon as they notice a threat they leap into the air without a single ounce of grace and whirr away. If you were a good shot you wouldn’t have to even try to look for them, you would just be able to stomp around and a target would present itself fairly quickly.

Over the years we have given these nervous ground dwellers more cover and their numbers have grown from one or two to about twenty. They still run for their lives if you disturb them but now they are slow to get out of the way of the car (which can be quite annoying if I am in a hurry) and can tolerate you being on the other side of a window. Although they are mostly a fairly dull brown colour they have the most amazing iridescent patches on their wings, hence the bronzewing part of their name. If these feathers catch the sunlight they are absolutely beautiful.

At the foot of the Steps of Death, and directly outside my large front window, there is a short, paved path leading to where I park my car. It is lined on both sides with lavender hedges and at certain times of the year becomes the bower for a series of very amusing pairings.

A male Bronzewing will start strutting his stuff up and down the path and repeatedly oooom with amusing wiggles, dances and head bobs. Almost immediately the females will come running along the road (not flying, just running) and whoever dashes down the path first gets her man. A very quick courtship ensues with more head bobbing and wiggling and chest puffing before the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it coupling. It ends with a thank you dance from the male and the completely disinterested female walks off leaving him looking a little embarassed to have made such a fuss.

Remember, all this happens right outside the loungeroom window!* The kids find the dancing of the male endlessly amusing and occasionally we will be ready to leave for school and end up waiting at the front door for the ooooming to stop so we can leave without disturbing them.

When I was disturbed by this bird ooooming outside the window on Friday I had just downloaded my camera so it was on the seat next to me. That means I managed to do this whole post, photo and all, without having to leave my seat. That is my kind of blogging!

Look how shiny I am! You know you want me….

* I did a post the other day with a photo of rosellas taken through the kitchen window which sparked a discussion on clean windows, or the lack thereof. Just so you know, my loungeroom windows are no cleaner than those in the kitchen so this time I can lay all the credit for a clear picture on a good camera and an appropriate depth of field…. NOT my housework 😉

Coal miners surprising discovery. 1926.

What an interesting story. They could have thought of a better headline than ‘Tribe of Liliputians Living in Colliery’ though, couldn’t they?

Some miners exploring a disused workings in Poolway, Gloucestershire, came across a mysterious creature with a striking resemblance to a human being, but only 14in high. The creature snarled like a monkey when it was trapped, and was so frightened by its encounter with the men that it died soon after.

Barrier Miner 4 Feb 1926 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article45925526

The miners noted the strangeness of the situation (the description of the creature is amazingly detailed, isn’t it?) but didn’t think to bring any evidence back with them. They left the tiny body on a pile of coal only for it to have disappeared when they thought to go back for it the next day. They attributed this to the creatures tribe taking it away.

Unsurprisingly, it was suggested that a touch of drink might have contributed to this sighting.

Soon after though, a woman saw a similar creature sitting on a lump of coal in her scuttle when she was preparing dinner one night. The children of the house were so scared of this terrifying beast that the man of the house threw the scuttle, coal and creature out of the front door.

I wonder if the poor thing picked itself up from under the pile of coal and stomped off to tell its other family members not to bother trying to make friends with those stupid new neighbours?

I wonder how surprised the little creature was at this mistreatment. After all, the description of it included a smiling face. It sounds like they had a small and cheerful visitor sitting safely out of harms way and not showing any signs of being a problem. They saw it, panicked, and chucked it out of the door.

Typical….. Nobody ever claps a big bowl or a sack over the top of these strange creatures, do they? A story like this never ends with photos or any type of artifact does it? It always ends with a variation of ‘and we never saw it again’.

It is almost like it wasn’t even real…

Dangerous backyard plants.

Ok, not dangerous to you or me, but if you are a small, curious insect you are in whole lot of trouble with these guys.

Sundews (Drosera) have many tiny tentacles growing from each leaf and each tentacle has a drop of stickiness at the end. Any passing insect will quickly find itself stuck in the goo and ripe for digestion, as you can see by the fly stuck in the centre of the lowest leaf.

It amazes me that such small plants can be so successful in attracting meals. This baby plant was only about 4cm tall, and while I was getting ready to take this photo, the mozzie hanging down on the left was caught by the foot as it flew in for a look. It is unusual to see this type of sundew in our garden (there are a few different types out there) without most of the leaves hanging on to some hapless victim.

Every year when the weather gets cold these tiny killers start showing their faces. I love carnivorous plants and have a small collection of them so having wild ones growing in my garden makes me very happy.

Many, many children. 1911.

Morning Bulletin 13 May 1911 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article53232072

Mr. Walehhofer must have been quite a husband. Either that or his wives didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.

I wonder if this guy ever changed a nappy. Married three times and 28 children. Wow. I wonder how many people lived in the town of Radstadt, Austria? If this man had 121 direct descendants that single family is quite enough to populate a town all on its own!

Imagine having that many children. I know that when you have a multitude of kids not all of them will be living in the family home at the same time but still….. That is a lot of hormonal teenagers to get through.

What an age spread too, sixteen to sixty-seven. That leaves open the possibility that the eldest childs siblings were younger than their own grandchildren.

I suppose that the parents would be doing less and less work themselves with that many helping hands, although there is no information on what happened to the first two wives. Maybe they died from overwork?

Backyard visitors.

When I finally dragged my pathetic self out of bed this morning and staggered my way to the kitchen for coffee, I was greeted by four cheery Crimson Rosellas in the grevillea right outside the kitchen window.

Usually the grevillea is Spinebill country and I love those little guys, but the rosellas were a nice wake up and they were happy to stay there chomping flowers until I got my camera and took a few photos so I could share them with you.

The thing I was most impressed with once I looked at the photos was that my kitchen windows were clean enough that the photos worked through them 😉