Friday, October 29, 2010

Favourite Things Friday - Birds In My Backyard

I was debating whether to do this as a FTF post, however I love the sounds of all the birds here (even the annoying ones) so I thought, what the heck, and as an interesting follow on to last week's FTF post of my view.  As I don't live in the city,  I have a large variety of birds visiting here.  I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to birds.  So I'm linking up with Mrs P's Favourite Things Friday this week.  It's a bit ironic, as Mrs P as said how she loves silence, and I certainly don't get very much silence with all these guys in the background.


A warning, some people may find this completely and utterly boring, I won't be upset.  Most Australians will know most of these birds, but I thought it might be interesting for overseas visitors.

I just found out about this website, Birds In Backyards . Now it might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you are at all interested there are a number of birds listed on this website that I regularly hear in my little piece of paradise.  SO, if you want to hear how raucous it is around here, you can find out,  unfortunately  there are no sweet melodic English countryside birds, no siree,  it's just a cacophony of bird song here.
You can see from the list below, the birds you can hear in my yard, just click on the link above to take you to the site if you want to hear some other Australian birds.
I have numbered them below to correspond with the numbers on the Birds in my Backyard website in case you are wondering why some numbers are missing and if you click on the link after each bird it will take you direct to the sound file (I hope).

1.   Common Koel - (Pacific Koel) that's the guy I told you about the other day, now you can hear the rest of his "song". (Michelle this is especially for you)  here
2.   Channel -billed Cuckoo  - thank god, not so often.  here
6.   Willie Wagtail  here
9.   Australia Raven  - (Crow) now I could use a slingshot on these! here
10. Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo - fortunately these are usually only here from about late March to August.  here
11. Australian Magpie  here
12.  Pied Currawong here
13.  Kookaburra here
17. Magpie Lark - another annoying one. here
18.  Galah - not many of these  here
19. Noisy Miner - these are quite aggressive, and scare off all the smaller birds, I used to wish I could get rid of them, but they are good as a warning signal, especially if they see a snake.  They saved my neighbours cat from a python, as they alerted my neighbours by their screeching. For the time being I am (relatively) happy that they live here.   here
32.  Australian King Parrot  here
33. Lorikeet - hundreds of these, they are very pretty but very very noisy. here
40. Figbird - not very many of these.  here

There are many many more that visit us and unfortunately that website doesn't cover all the birds that I hear daily.

I also  found a You Tube video of the  Eastern Whipbird, it is the most amazing sound which I love listening to even though it is loud. It is not the best video but the audio is great.


13 comments:

  1. I love birds, but we don't have many exotic types in our area. Mostly sparrows, swallows, chimney sweeps, cardinals, the occasional kestrel, and crows. Lots of crows.

    Thanks for sharing. I love the bird sounds.

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  2. I am very impressed that you know what they are all called. We get noisy minors here and they are utter pests and have driven all the small birds away. We use to have a wattle bird that use to keep them away but he has either gone to the big tree in the sky or moved on so now we have loads of them. I got smacked on the head the other week by one of them when I went for my morning walk. When we first moved in there were loads of magpies as the previous owner use to feed them, we usually have the babies in our garden from time to time now but we don't feed them. And we get the rainbow lorikeets in our palm tree and one of our conifers.

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  3. I think I'll leave you to wake up to all the birdsong. I have enough to deal with with the road traffic outside and the urban foxes that seem to either fight or f*** outside the house around 3am. Not sure what they do but a lot of screeching is involved!

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  4. I love listening to birds twittering, especially first thing in the morning. My little guys are not exotic like yours. I mainly have Bluebirds and Carolina Wrens visiting my yard. Wow! You're right about the riotous bunch outside your door. Fabulous site to surf. Thanks for sharing a great Favourite! :o) Happy FTF!

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  5. I love birds too and when I'm somewhere new I always look for the birds that live in the area first thing.
    Cheers
    Helen

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  6. How awesome! I only listened to a few, but I'd love to come back and hear them all. Thanks for the link. Birds in the backyard is definitely one of my favorite things too!

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  7. You dont have manay galahs there because they all live in my backyard (bastards) as do all the corellas in Australia.

    We forget how lucky we are to have such a diverse range of birdlife here dont we?

    There is something soothing about the chirp of little birds outside in the morning . Some of the birds you have up there are LOUD though.

    Great FTF this week Marg. Have you got rid of the snake yet ?

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  8. I'm sure we have birds here, but we have some noisy neighbor dogs and that's usually all I hear. I'm glad you have a good attitude about all your little chirping friends.

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  9. I'm jealous! All we seem to get are the little house finches, which are lovely but really make a mess of my feeders, and the huge black crows. Those just scare me.
    Thanks for sharing your birds with me!

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  10. Oh, how interesting! It is neat to hear what it sounds like on your side of the world. Thanks so much for sharing.

    xo -El

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  11. A bit behind in my blog following this week. Love all the birds and the sounds. Thanks so much for sharing!

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  12. Thats a lot of birds, must have taken ages to put together, i saw one quite similar on bloon it was cute, she managed to get the sound too, hope you had a good weekend.

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  13. Oooooh its a jungle down there!!!

    Don't forget those noisy cicadas as well....the humming and chirping was so loud when I went for my nice quiet ride in the bush this afternoon that I had to put my hands over my ears to hear myself think :-)

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