Birding in my Backyard

One of the things I find most frustrating about birding in my backyard is the number of birds that come down briefly into my yard and fly off again very quickly. They just don't like the area! That's understandable of course as in the process of turning this into land suitable for housing all the large trees and shrubs have been taken out. Since coming here I have planted things as quickly as possible but none of the trees are very large yet.
Last year I had brief views of Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes but none stayed long enough for me to even get the camera out. This year they have been back briefly and I was able to at least get a few photos. I hear them fairly often but I think they are possibly over the road from here in an area of National Park.
In May I got photos of this bird – an immature bird.
In late June this one came and sat on the electricity wires on the roadside and looked things over for a while.

A couple of months later again and quite a group of birds were next door in the big pine tree. I was very interested to see the way the birds were moving their wings as they sat and called to each other. I have been told by an experienced birder that they used to be called “Shufflewings” for this display. I have now also found this name listed in the Readers' Digest Book of Australian Birds. This little video clip shows this action but was taken handheld and is a bit shaky!