Wildlife Visitors in September

This is my participation in a monthly event called Wildlife Wednesdays hosted by Tina of My Gardner Says …

September was the first month of Spring here in Australia and it was good to have a few days of decent rain to get things growing and coming alive again to provide more food for all the spring babies.

Everybody loves Rainbow Lorikeets, so I’ve taken a video of them at an afternoon feed on our veranda. And in case you’re wondering, we only feed them sometimes and we use the same food that Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary uses, which is Wambaroo Lorikeet Food, which is a powder that smells like fresh baked sweet biscuits and it’s mixed with water to make a porridge consistency that mimics nectar. The rainbow lorikeets love it and so do the noisy miners and scaly breasted lorikeets whenever they get a chance to grab some!

This is a Blue Tongued Lizard and was over half a metre in length. A group of noisy miners were shrieking from a branch above it and when I went to investigate I thought at first it was a snake, but then I realised it had legs. Whew! I haven’t seen one of these lizards since I was a little girl and Dad uncovered one hiding behind the shed in the backyard in Sydney, so this was a wildlife treat for me!

We also had a visit from several sulphur crested cockatoos. This one was in a gum tree screeching. Wait for it …….

And this one was eating grass along our driveway. Who needs a lawnmower when you have one of these? 🙂

Now, you might recall seeing a photo of a small brushtail possum joey back in the July post looking like a little orange furry thing. Well, here he is in the possum box with his mother, grown up a bit more with the grey colouring now and sound asleep, quite oblivious to me taking his picture.

And here they are visiting for a nightly snack before they venture out on their possum adventures.

Another female possum and her older joey have been visiting us quite frequently. Here’s a short video of them on our veranda when I gave them each a piece of banana. The joey finished his bit and went after Mum’s. 🙂

We had a lot of nocturnal activity from the brushtail possums, so if you would like to see more photos of them with their joeys you can see them here.

It has been lovely to see a lot more of the pale headed rosellas around our place. We hear them quite regularly now, so it seems there are more around these days than ever before. I captured this video where you can hear two different calls they make.

There were a range of insects that I discovered during September, and I am still working on the identification of a couple of them, so if you happen to know what they are let me know.

unidentified

Bronze Orange Bug

unidentified

unidentified but possibly a looper

Common ladybird

assassin bug

One of my favourite birds is the Pied Currawong. Unfortunately, our magpie father Igor has done a wonderful job in keeping away the meat eating birds while his missus is sitting on a nest somewhere close by, so I have only seen the currawongs in next door’s property. This is a video I took at dusk and using a zoom, so the quality isn’t very good but you can hear their lovely call saying goodnight.

And we haven’t seen very much of the pied butcherbirds either, because as soon as they turn up, Igor appears out of nowhere and chases them away. He leaves the juveniles alone, although he is sitting nearby just watching, so I was able to get a few videos of this juvenile pied butcherbird practising his singing. Although he was happy for me to film him, he appeared to get nervous toward the end as Igor was around and birds were flying about causing a raucous and he even sounded a touch off key near the end! And I love how he fluffs his head up every now and then. 🙂

And although we could hear the kookaburras in the early morning and at sunset, we didn’t see much of them at all (thanks to Igor!) and this was the only photo I was able to get all month.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my wildlife visitors. 🙂