ON THE WING
The pastel-yellow flowers of bottlebrushes swaying in the breeze, and clinging to them, silvereyes. The silvereyes perform like tiny acrobats on the trapeze, hanging upside down at times, before letting go, righting themselves in mid-flight and then reaching out with their claws to grab another cluster of flowers.
I watch the silvereyes performing their manoeuvres for hours. I should be working at the computer in my study — writing bird columns and other articles about nature — but I am constantly drawn to the window.
This week it is silvereyes, feeding on pollen and nectar supplied by the bottlebrushes in flower. A few weeks previously it was green rosellas feasting on the blooms of silver wattles and as the spring and summer progresses it will be eastern spinebills arriving to hover at the bright-red flowers of fuchsias, behaving like hummingbirds.
Drawing on the acrobatic metaphor used for the behaviour of the silvereyes I always say my garden is like a circus, with a new act every so often, every day at the height of spring and summer.
I like to describe it as a passing parade of wonders that Mother Nature has to offer. I do not have to go to the wilds of Tasmania, to a national park, to witness unusual and beautiful birds, and at night mammals like pademelons, potoroos, bandicoots and, once, an eastern quoll. This is a garden environment, in a suburb, not 3km from the Hobart town clock.
The role of the garden ecosystem was thrown into focus a few years back with the first-ever Backyard Bird Watch, organised by BirdLife Australia to coincide with spring. The count has now become an annual event, taking place between October 22-28 this year. During the week birdwatchers and bird lovers are invited to compile lists of birds spotted in gardens, city parks and reserves, and forward them to birding groups so as to compile a census of birds visiting gardens nationwide.
The garden birdwatch draws inspiration from one held in Britain for 20 years or so, a program organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which attracts more than 20,000 participants.
I mention backyard birding this week because this time of the year our gardens are at their most showy, and gardeners feel compelled to tend them. I’m often asked how to make gardens bird friendly. Ideally, a garden should have open and closed zones with native vegetation at various heights to attract species that feed at ground-level such as superb fairy-wrens and robins, species which hunt shrubs for food such as New Holland honeyeaters, and then those preferring a canopy of tall trees, satin flycatchers among them.