Feel I Want To Share

[dita]

Thanks Shutterfrog, they are lovely little things, Chickadee would suit it.
The Butcherbirds have really appealling faces, wonder how big they are as they resemble our Magpie, however they are maybe much smaller.

[Steve]

Some birds are just greedy!!!

[Monsy]

I wouldn't hurt one, but they are just rats with wings!

[dejavou]

Flying s**thouses as they're know around here

[Lacemaker]

....The Butcherbirds have really appealling faces, wonder how big they are as they resemble our Magpie, however they are maybe much smaller.

They are roughly half the size of the magpies, Dita, not large birds by any means.

[dita]

Thanks Lacemaker, thought they were.

[Maywalk]

Super photos on this thread.
I wish I had birds like those coming into my garden.

Keep the photos coming.

[dita]

After midnight last sat night I was just shutting my bedroom curtains, our bedroom overlooks the only street in the village. Saw a couple of cats one of which was playing with what I thought was a mouse, turned out it was a bird, yes! at that time of night. I flew (ha ha) downstairs shouting at my husband on the way down to help, ran into the road in my PJ's to rescue the bird and as I did a movement to my right showed this little bird hopping towards the path. Yes! two birds, I could not believe what was going on especially at this time of night, anyway one was fine but the other was badly in trauma because the cat had been throwing it around, if I had not seen this going on these little birds would certainly have died.

We hunted in the shed for our old birdcage, put it and them in the bath overnight and just prayed they would both be alive the next day, which they were and very soon they were calling for their Mum. Luck was going their way because lo and behold the parent was answering. Knowing they would not survive in our care I went and dug a few worms which we fed to them, we then gently put them on top of the shed. Eventually we think they were back with the parents because they came visiting them with food and calling from a nearby tree. Just hope so anyway.

[dejavou]

Well done Dita, cats are very cruel

[Rowan]

It's just their nature - birds and mice are their prey but it is terrible how they play with them before killing them. They don't always eat them either. Just leave them on your doorstep as a "gift".

My cat once brought in a bird through the casement window which was open. She played with it around the kitchen with me (and I am terrified of birds too) running up and down like a lunatic shouting at it and thumping my dad's walking stick on the floor at it. She eventually stopped playing with it and my sister put the bird back outside on the grass while I held onto the squirming cat. I just hope that bird recovered and flew away. There was no sign of it when I checked later.

[Lacemaker]

Lovely photos Dita.

I decided to have a barbecue yesterday afternoon - it was a beautiful day and quite mild. So I got the sausages and bacon out together with a plain salad, removed a lot of the fat from the bacon and put it on one side. A few minutes later The Butcher Bird flew down and started helping himself to the bacon fat........nothing goes to waste here !

[dita]

Great Lacemaker, you sound to get joy over the birds too, I spend many an hour looking through my kitchen window learning much about how they live and survive. At the moment we seem to have greenfinches by the hundreds, they are outdoing the sparrow for sure. Guess I am very lucky to live where I do, this morning as I took Sophie for her morning walk I encountered 4 large hares boxing in the field, only me scared them away and I was sorry to disturb them. BUT then I would'nt have seen them.!!!!!

[Lacemaker]

I do get a lot of joy out of them Dita and like you I spend hours looking at them through the window as well as going outside to hand feed them.

The lorikeets usually come down to be fed at various times throughout the day and when I bang the spoon on the dish to let them know the food is out it is usually only a minute or so before they arrive - together with the Butcher Bird, the Magpies (sometimes) and the Currawong.

My friend up in Queensland is the same only she also has a family of Kookaburras to feed - they watch her walking up and down her kitchen (a long narrow room with windows along one of the long walls). You can see their heads moving watching her the way the fans watch the ball at tennis matches......and she also has three or four wild bush turkeys to feed as well !

[dejavou]

Sounds lovely ladies, we have hundreds of feral cats around here, so the bird population is VERY depleted

[dita]

We have a few cats still but not as many as we used to have so our bird population is building up again. Apart from the occasional situation I just encountered with the baby thrushes.