Australian bird pictures

During my time living in Aussie, when I began my original blog and wrote a book, I took numerous photos of birdlife. As I am restarting my blog I thought I would share just a few of my favorite photos in a post before resuming my normal/regular postings dating back to December 2014.

 The first picture is of a young Australian black-backed magpie. We used to have a family visit our yard a few times a day for the first couple of years living in Wollongong. The youngsters soon learned my son and I were harmless and provided food.

Once the magpies had flown to other territory, a pair of released show pigeons moved in. They had four youngsters on a neighbor's roof, and mingled with a local flock. We ended up with quite a crowd at feeding times.

 This next shot shows the original male, Fluffy and one of the offspring on top our wheelie bins.

 Australia had a variety of crested birds - my next two photos demonstrate the variety. First, a pair of red-whiskered bulbuls resident in our back garden. Secondly, a pair of cockatoos, also in the back yard, who came to visit as soon as my sunflowers were ripe, ready to steal the seed.

 One of the better known Australian birds is the kookaburra, and yes, we had some visit our yard. The are well known for swooping down and pinching sausages from BBQs, but this fellow preferred my pastry!

One of my friends, Smokey, was one of the pigeons born on a neighbor's roof. He was the bravest and tamest of the flock and used to wait on my windowsill for me to bring out the seed tub. He would fly right down onto my wrist and try to beak out the best seeds before I got a chance to tip it up to scatter them for everyone. He also used to come into our house - along with some of the other show pigeons and a couple of the magpies.