"Aussie wildlife visitors" Personal Page by colin_bramso

Rainbow Lorikeets on our balcony.

The most colourful visitors, and the noisiest, are the Rainbow Lorikeets. Each one has different plumage, so you get to know them individually. Other members of the parrot family that we see in our garden are Rosellas, which are even more colourful but very shy, and sometimes King Parrots. They have the most amazing emerald green & bright orange colour combination. They're also shy and I've never managed to photograph them, but I'll keep trying.

Cuckoo with Currawong foster-parent!

One of the more unusual visitors was a very big Cuckoo. I think it's called a Channel Bill Cuckoo. You probably know that Cuckoos lay their egg in another bird's nest, so that the other birds will hatch the egg and raise the young bird. We watched a pair of Currawongs, which are quite big birds, like a Crow, raising a Cuckoo that just got bigger and bigger. The poor Currawongs nearly exhausted themselves trying to find it enough food! This happened two consecutive years. As the Currawongs were regular visitors to our balcony, they brought the Cuckoo along too.

Heron on our balcony.

Another unusual visitor only came once, but I managed to quickly take a photo of him, or maybe it was a her. It was a Heron, I don't know the correct name but I will try to look it up. It spent a while on our balcony, then wandered around our neighbour's swimming pool, where it's mate joined it. They eventually flew off back to the nearby lagoon, which is where we usually see them.

Our baby wild Turkey.

Not too unusual in this area are Brush Turkeys. In the heavily-wooded valley at the end of the street there are many of them. This was a bit different, though, because a tiny baby turned up in our front garden. We gave it water and food and it gradually became used to us. When it was just about fully grown it would take food from Geina's hand. Sometimes we see an adult bird walking around the garden and we wonder whether it's 'our' Turkey.

Blue Tongue Lizard.

Getting away from birds, we have a family of Blue Tongue Lizards living in the back garden. They're quite big, maybe 40cm long. Although Geina's frightened of lizards, these are very useful because they eat snails. Geina grows various vegetables, herbs and salad, so she puts up with the Blue Tongues so there aren't many snails to do too much damage!

Cute Possum.

I took this photo on the balcony of a previous house we lived in, a Possum eating bread we'd put out for her. We also have plenty of possums in Terrigal. They live in the trees which are all around us, and they seem to like the fruit in my palm trees. Every evening, the security light comes on and it's a big possum climbing from tree to tree looking for the best fruit.

A Magpie comes calling.

And finally, to prove how closely we co-exist with the wildlife, we have a pair of Magpies as regular visitors. This one became particularly bold and if I didn't feed him/her, would wander into the house looking for us. Here it is, right inside the lounge room being fed by Geina.