Springtime Has Sprung

Living next to the bush brings us into close contact with the birds and other animals that live here. There are possums, echidnas, bandicoots, eastern water-dragons, bush turkeys, and a host of other beautiful, Australian birds. The most regular visitors to our deck are the Kookaburra Family, which consists of Mother, Father and several babies. They come for breakfast and have some devon or bacon rind, pop in again for other snacks during the day, and make a final visit just before their bedtime. In between visits, they dig in the dirt for worms, and catch insects and other meaty treats.
We also have a Mother Curraowong who stands in the gutter and catches the meat we throw her on the full. She has a teenage son who is very wild, and not at all friendly, so we ignore him.
Recently, we have had the pleasure of visits from a Magpie Family, which has noticed that we are the local Bird Cafe in the area. Mother and Father Magpie are quite nervous, but very grateful for the food we give them, and their baby thinks it's normal to have humans to hand-feed him. He's not scared because he hasn't been taught to fear humans. As you can see in the photo, he is still very speckled and brownish-grey, and it will be a while before he develops the pitch-black feathers of his parents.
The Cockatoos have just started visiting again, after the winter break, and they love sunflower seeds. They screech loudly to let us know they've arrived, and we risk having the deck pecked at, and the wooden beams eaten, if we don't attend to them. They are very intelligent, and like to examine anything new or different around the place.
Last winter, two little Butcher Birds started watching the avian activity on our deck, from a distance, and noticed that there were two ways to get food. They saw that they could be hand-fed like the kookaburras or fed from the gutter, by catching the meat on the full. One day, the very brave little wife came down and tried being hand-fed. She got what she wanted, and immediately flew up into the gutter to see if that would work too. Bingo! I threw some meat in the air and she caught it on the full. She then became a regular visitor, along with the kookaburras, magpies and currawong. Her husband was much more cautious, and watched his wife receive food for two or three weeks, before he drummed up the courage to trust us. He has also recently started being hand-fed and can catch his meat on the full as well.
The other regular visitors are the Rainbow Lorrikeets. They are very fast-fliers, very intelligent and very domineering, and would take over the whole deck if we let them, but we don't. We feed them with apple and pear cores, sultanas and currants, and they love it. There is a main couple that comes each day, especially when it's been raining, but often their friends come with them, and we can have forty of them on the deck at one time. The husband and wife lorrikeets that come each day are very faithful and loving to each other, and they snuggle up and keep each other warm on cold, rainy days.
Other birds that arrive on the deck less often are the beautiful, red and green King Parrots, the bright red and blue Rosellas, and the occasional, very shy, yellow, red and blue Eastern Rosella.
In summer, the Eastern Water-dragons laze around the pool, and we throw them pieces of devon too. They are very pleased with the meat that falls from the sky, and seem to know that when they see humans on the deck, they might get lucky. If the kookaburras are watching from the trees, there is a race to see who can get the meat first - lizard or bird. Usually the birds win and the lizards retreat to the bushes. You can see a photo of an Eastern water-dragon in the pool, if you look down towards the bottom of the photo section on the right.
This is what life is like when you live close to the bush in Australia. The humans, birds and animals are all neighbours together.