Pied Butcherbirds

My friends Sarah and Graham have a delightful yard full of big trees, stretches of grass, and areas of closely packed low shrubs and bushes. The birds love it! Sarah keeps me up-to-date with the birds that are regularly seen.  The other week she told me that there was a family of Red-winged Parrots with a couple of very young ones - and did I want to try for photos?  Of course! Their back yard has numbers of large eucalyptus trees with lots of holes suitable for nesting holes. She also said that there had been King Parrots and Pale-headed Rosellas around.

However, the only birds that came close while I was there was a family of Pied Butcherbirds (Cracticus nigrogularis). If you look carefully in that last tree there is one of the birds perching on a branch up against the sky.
The first bird to come down close was a young one. It looked so small and cute down among the grass but it must have broken some unwritten adult rule because one of the adults came down and gave it a good pecking! The young one didn't know what to do except to crouch down submissively among the grass.  As soon as the adult moved off a bit the young one flew back in among the bushes and stayed there.

There was a second youngster which was a little bigger and kept out of the way on bare branches above us.

Here is the adult. Look at that hook on the beak. It makes a good weapon and one of my birding books says that a Butcherbird is more dangerous to small birds than a bigger Hawk.

Butcherbirds have a most melodious song - as well as other quite piercing sounds! They get very tame - especially if they are fed! This is a youtube video of a couple of birds singing to attract the attention of someone inside that feeds them. Towards the end of the video a magpie comes in and warbles briefly.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMotkPv1eMw

For more scenery from around the world visit Out World Tuesday

and for more birds visit Wild Bird Wednesday.