Ron's blog

I told you about the conference the pied butcherbirds held on our mulberry tree. Since then, we have not seen Gerry's parents Freddy and Terry. Remember, Gerry is their nine months old bub. Gerry has been holding the main butcherbird territory all by himself every since. Two of the five of the newcomer birds think they have the right to live there with Gerry, and they have had a few arguments about who is allowed to take food where.

I went outside this morning to say hello to Gerry, our local pied butcherbird juvenile, only to find that on the mulberry tree were Gerry and four adults. Gerry's family only has two adults.

What's up? The other week the intruder group of pied butcherbirds had made a sortie or two over our place and got Freddy, Terry, and Gerry all stirred up, but this time there didn't seem to be any conflict going on at all.

Last night I knew I would be busy just when it got dark, so I went our ten minutes earlier than normal and called out goodnight to all our birds.

Teddy and Tommy were one year's kids from our darling Butch and Cas pied butcherbird family. You may remember Butch got sick and we had to take her to the vet for treatment, and after she recovered, B&C left one of their eldest kids, Freddy, in their territory and 'went on a world cruise' - that is, they left the hard work of raising another family to their son Freddy.

Georgie Magpie has not returned. The day we last saw her, we were getting some help from a friend doing home renovations, so we couldn't pay as much attention as usual, and our magpies would have been wary of the presence of other humans, so it may be they were trying to tell us where Georgie was going but we weren't listening.