Our backyard is full of bird life. Wattle birds, magpies, parrots, cockatoos, galahs, currawongs, finches, willy wag tails, and blue wrens.
Nundle has had double its average winter rainfall and the birds know it. They are feeding on the abundance of seeds, fruit, and insects that comes with an exceptional season.
Up until a week ago the yard was a battle ground with two families of magpies and a family of currawongs defending their territories.
If a faction dared cross an invisible boundary it was swiftly swooped, lucky to avoid body contact.
We suspect a currawong decapitated a neighbouring baby magpie. Brutal.
We adopted a young magpie after it fell from its nest, high in one of the gum trees on our fence line. Or was it pushed? We'll never know.
Ten weeks later it now has a routine of sleeping in a large cage underneath our house of a night, before he/she is taken into the backyard for a feed of worms dug from the garden, crushed insect powder bought from the pet shop, or defrosted mince divided into daily magpie portions. During the day when we are not around to protect it from bombing birds, it has the use of our neighbour's abandoned aviary.
This morning the boys and I counted four cockatoos in the plum tree that nudges our house. The second storey kitchen window or the back door of the shop, at the same height as the tree canopy, are proving to be ideal bird watching positions.
