Now that the Kestrel chick has taken wing and left the confines of the nest forever, let's have a look back over how she's changed along the way. Here's how she -- or one of her siblings -- looked when freshly hatched and little more than a bundle of grey fluff and a wide-open beak. …
Time is passing and it's not always possible to be at the nest when significant things happen. That's particularly true of late, so it was no surprise to happen by the Block of Flats the other day to find that our chick had taken wing! It had been obvious that this was on the cards, …
When I took a quick look on Monday, the chick had come out of the hole in the tree: This is just what the two chicks from 2023 did: This is a major development and means our little sprout will soon be on the wing. It's been getting too big for the hole it calls …
Let's take a break from the sadder aspects of the Kestrels' struggle to raise their offspring at the Block of Flats and have a look at something common to all living things' drive to survive: food. The wise scholars at Wikipedia tell us that the Nankeen Kestrel's "Diet is varied, with a large number of …
Recently we had a couple of days' rain and wind which prevented me from visiting the nest site. I figured it would be a good thing to give the poor harassed parents a break from my sticky beaking (pun totally intended). But when yesterday dawned beautiful and clear, I hotfooted it up there to have …
While waiting for signs that the Kestrels were working on raising a family in the Block of Flats, I witnessed a few skirmishes in what seemed to be a serious territorial dispute. And it wasn't the other residents of the Block who were the aggressors, but a bunch of Currawongs -- the pied variety (Strepera …
As usual, updating this blog is going more slowly than developments in the real world. In other words, I'm not keeping up. I've got a good post nearly done, but in the meantime, stuff keeps happening. So I thought I'd jump the queue and do a quick post just introducing the offspring of our hard-working …
So this great tree has come up before on these pages: it's a giant old dead one, with enough holes and hollows to host a plethora of nests. I don't know what species this tree might have been, but it's one of the dead giants that seem to litter Gillamatong -- testament to a drought …
OK, in the new spirit of this blog -- which is to put out more frequent, less involved and obscure posts -- I thought I'd update you all on the kestrel situation. These pretty predators are my favourites, and this year is shaping up well for spotting and photographing a couple as they rear their …
What's up with this year's spring? None of the expected birds or butterflies are doing what's expected of them -- I'm driven to ponder some comforting thoughts that stray dangerously close to cliché.
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