With the imminent lifting of the Sydney COVID Lockdown, we take a look back at some visitors to the backyard over the last few months. I would set up my home office each day on the back deck, and around the middle of the day I would take a short break to eat lunch, and to photograph the birds that occasionally shared mealtime with me.
The Rainbow Lorikeets were always happy to share my apple:
A Currawong once tried the apple too, but wanted it takeaway:
Of course, regular visitor Lefty the Magpie (see “Lefty” – Sep 1 2021) often came around on the scrounge food – bread or chicken or cheese.
Sulphur-crested Cockatoos would also come around if we put a seed-block out:
The pair of Butcher-birds (see “Backyard Butchers” Aug 31 2021) would also take the opportunity if there was ever any dropped food.
Two cats are having a temporary stay with us, and one of them flatly refuses to eat indoors. Because of that, there is often beef, kangaroo, chicken or salmon in the cat bowls on the back deck, as well as special biscuits.
We realise it is bad for birdlife to be fed too much processed meat – it can lead to calcium and other mineral deficiencies, which can compromise eggshell strength and bone density of chicks. We would not ever deliberately feed birds the food we feed the cats, but as we use raw meats that contain ground bone and offal, and biscuits that enhanced “science diet” – we hope that as long as they are stealing it in small enough quantities, it’s OK for them.
I filled a meat-encrusted cat bowl with water in order to soak: Lefty found this meat-flavoured water an interesting drop.
But it wasn’t always dropped cheese and cat meat. Sometimes they lunched on their natural diet.
And finally, in a tree in our neighbour’s yard overlooking ours, a King Parrot had a big lunch of fruit. (Apologies – I do not know what sort of tree this is).
Bramandagram 