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 …
While the kestrels' chick continues to grow at a fantastic rate, I wouldn't want to give the impression that my lens isn't occasionally focused elsewhere. Travelling to and from the nest site, there's a plethora of other wildlife to be seen -- a bonus, as it wouldn't be seen without the kestrel obsession to drive …
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 …
Well this is not really going the way I had imagined or indeed hoped it would. I'd envisioned an account of the dedicated Kestrel parents striving to raise three vigorous offspring; that idea took a dent when the third and presumably weakest chick disappeared from the nest. And today there's no point sugar-coating it: when …
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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