We have three families of Superb Fairy-wrens that regularly nest on the property. One pair nests near our house and they are not very successful as they spend much of their time attacking the windows of the swimming pool room and our car side mirrors.

The next family, usually a breeding pair with two or more assistants, breeds behind a shade house along the fence line in a Callistemon bush about 2 metres off the ground and they raise two lots of young successfully each year. They feed on insects from a wide range of shrubs and even quite high up in trees. 

One of Ed’s Superb Fairy-wrens

The third pair nests on shrubs on the road verge and, while they are in excellent condition, they seldom raise a family as they are put off with the traffic and dogs and cats from the neighbours’ properties. 

The Variegated Fairy-wrens live in the drier parts of the property and they generally forage on insects. They breed in the Lantana on the SEQEB easement or on the drier Western facing slopes over the back of our property.

Variegated Fairy-wren – courtesy of Ed Frazer

They are more secretive and range over quite large overlapping territories so I am not sure how many breeding groups there are. Usually they have only one coloured male with a number of juveniles including some young males with blue tails. Often there are 5 or 6 in the troupe. They usually breed successfully, raising 4 young twice a year. 

The Red-backed Fairy-wrens are the most interesting of the three. They have smaller territories and feed much more on the insects in the grass than the other two. Usually there is only one male to about 4 females and juveniles. Sometimes there are two coloured males and often they associate with the Variegated Fairy-wrens.

I had an interesting experience where 4 fully coloured males were showing off to a group of females. Two of the males had a petal each of what we call  “Wild Salvia” in their beaks. The petals are bright red and I assume they were trying to enhance their similarly red coloured backs. While this is not a common practice I have seen it before.

One day when the Wild Salvia was not in flower I saw a Red-back carrying an orange Lantana petal in its beak. Maybe it was colour blind, but birds perceive colour differently to us.

Red-backed Fairy-wren on Ed’s property

 

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If a picture is worth a thousand words here is the equivalent of 10,000! 

I’m not knowledgeable about the names of identification of the different species of Antechinus so these photos may be of the Yellow-footed, Brown or the newly discovered Buff-footed Antechinus. Hopefully one of our readers may be able to identify which one from tjhese photos.

The first four are of an Antechinus that was holed up during the day in a crevice between two tree trunks near the top of our hill. I was photographing a White-throated Treecreeper when the bird got a huge fright and out came this little fellow.

   

  

The next five photos are of an Antechinus that was helping itself to mealworms I was putting out to encourage the Painted Button-quail to come into camera range. They were taken over several days and it gradually it became less timid. It was in a much wetter area in a gully at the back of our property in Adavale Street.

The following photo of the cat taken with an infra-red triggered camera is just one of several I have taken at night. The cat was playing with the animal before it killed it. It is not clear if it was an Antechinus, a Melomys or a mouse, but there is no doubt that Antechinus and other small native animals are being slaughtered by domestic cats that are allowed to hunt our native wildlife at night.

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Over the years we have had fluctuations in the numbers and species of finches. Early on it was “Bullies” and “Double-bars” that dominated. In recent years it has been “Red-brows”.

Last year our slashing contractor had a major tractor breakdown. Our grassed areas weren’t mowed and the grasses seeded and hayed off during the winter. For the first time in about 30 years I saw a flock of about 30 “Bullies” wheeling around in a dense flock and settling on the dry seeded grass.

We also had a resurgence of “Double-bars” too, close to the numbers I remember years ago.

Finches can breed up rapidly as they have up to six young each nesting, and can breed up to three times a year if conditions are good.

I have concluded that each finch species has a preference for different stages of the grass seed. I think the “Red-brows’ like the green and semi-ripe seed and take it live off the grasses.

The “Bullies’ seem to like the mature seed still on the stalk and the “Double-bars” prefer the dry seed which they eat off the ground. There is cross-over and each will take any type of seed in scarce times, but their numbers seems to be related to the availability of these stages of ripeness of the seed.

This year I have again allowed the grasses to ripen their seed fully and I am watching to see if my theory is correct.

You can learn more about Bullies in Jim Butler’s Feather Fascination January 2017

All photos courtesy of Ed Frazer.

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