Our home at Sandy Beach backs onto the bush, so birds abound. Here are three of the feathered friend species who make us smile daily.

Brush Turkeys

We affectionately call the Brush Turkeys ‘the chooks’.  There is a group of about a dozen just outside our back gate, busily scratching around in the nearby woodland as they rack up the vegetation looking for grubs and building mounds. They are a protected species. As you can see they are big and a bit odd looking. The local neighbours have a love/hate relationship with them because they are quite comical to watch but are unstoppable landscaping machines. The males, recognisable by their bald red head and bright yellow wattle hanging from the neck, build massive compost mounds out of leaf litter to incubate their eggs, while the females scratch for grubs. We have finally figured out why we have so many rocks in our garden: it stops the chooks from destroying the beds! The previous owners of our place replaced light mulch with river pebbles and although we were tempted to remove them at first, we have left the rockeries where they are and have managed to keep the turkeys off our garden to date. It might be a different matter once we get our veggie patch organised!

Rainbow Bee-Eaters

The Rainbow Bee-Eaters are brilliantly coloured birds which are ground-nesting in the grassy reserve just off the beach. Their vibrant green, blue, yellow and chestnut plumage is striking, particularly when the sun hits them. Always in pairs, they are believed to mate for life. The male will bring the female insects while she digs the burrow that will be their nest. And as it is breeding season right now, it is a treat to see them with their iridescent colours and acrobatic flying a few meters from our home. They are particularly active first thing in the morning, so as Wade grabs his board to go for a surf, Chris grabs her camera!

Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos

These large cockatoos are unmistakable with their loud wailing call as they perch in the native trees on dusk. A group of 6 to 8 cockatoos are daily visitors in the late afternoon but there are occasions when a huge flock of several dozen birds raucously descend on the banksias. They are loud, active, playful, and we love watching them although they are difficult to photograph in the diminishing light.

It is joyful being able to reconnect with nature from our new land base! We hope you too enjoy this return to bird photography.