Ron's blog

Each year we've been blessed with our friendship with Maggie and his family and friends, there has been a different emphasis. Nothing has been the same two years in a row. This year, making sure we don't lose contact with grey butcherbird Larry, his family and friends, has been the big challenge. Previously, he had the territory over the road, and the pied butcherbirds Butch and family had the territory behind our house. (The two species have a single territory map, and don't share land.) Although Butch and gang don't want Larry to come, the situation worked out okay.

Larry the grey butcherbird has been having trouble from the new pied butcherbird group just up the road. When everyone else had been fed and had gone away, I sneaked out into the yard to look for Larry and the other grey butcherbirds.

We've had a very interesting week watching (and participating) in the relationships amongst our butcherbirds. On the back side of the house we have our original pied butcherbird family, Butch and Cass and two of their adult children. Along the road is a new pied butcherbird group of five or six, two of whom are two older kids of Butch and Cass, namely Teddy and Tommy, who, I am quite convinced once saved Gitie's life by warning her of a nearby highly venomous snake, and chasing it out of our yard.

Unfortunately our camera is on the fritz, just when you need it most!

Yesterday I was about to get in the car to go to town when an all-fired ruckus broke out behind the house. Running round, we saw a massive flock of galahs and rosellas and such birds crazily swirling here and there and crying out desperately as they wheeled here and there.

Then I noticed some hawk-like birds in amongst them. It was very hard to focus on them and get a clear view of exactly what they were, but it was clearly an attack upon the flock birds.