Baby Birds

The past couple of months, September & October, it's been amazing watching all the baby birds. They're easy to spot because they're always a bit chubby & fluffy and they all squawk all the time at their mothers 'give me food, give me food, give me more food'. There are chubby little Redbrowed Finches darting around the backyard, little Honeyeaters learning how to fly, baby ducks being shepherded along by their parents for morning swim school, mother magpies feeding their ravenous babies, fluffy little Figbirds & a nest of Magpielarks who seemed to go from tiny to exploring around the tree the nest was in within a week or so. Interestingly once they were all out of the nest & on branches in the tree the nest was destroyed. I don't know though whether the mother does that or another bird.

In the first five pics there is a Common Koel chick in a Little Wattlebird nest. As this chick has got bigger … and bigger, it’s become clear that’s it’s actually a Koel being fed by Little Wattlebirds. The Common Koel is a brood parasite, that is, it lays its eggs in the nests of other bird species. A single egg is laid in the host’s nest and once hatched the chick forces the other eggs and hatchlings out of the nest. When the chick leaves the nest it roosts in the outer branches of a tree, cheeping incessantly while the significantly smaller parents desperately search for sufficient food to satisfy the nagging youngster. This is a full-time job, as the young Koel will grow to nearly twice their size. Eventually, it migrates northwards, usually later than the adults, to return as a breeding bird the following spring.