Saturday, May 6, 2017

An afternoon of maintenance, practice and a rowdy visit. And bathing wrens.

I went to get a photo of the bower site and the adjacent trees, particular the smooth trunked Bleeding Hearts (Homolanthus populifolus), up which Odimbar can skip in half a second to sit in his observer post. See this when he's had a drink, second movie below. These elegant rainforest trees, named for their leaf appearance, arrive as seeds in bird droppings. That is the close observation post. 60 or70 metres away in a neighbour's backyard, he goes much higher to guard his territory.

In going to take a photo, with the iPad, I discovered two wrens having a bath. A low quality movie in low light, but you can make out the wrens having fun at the birdbath.



The very dense tree in the right is Michelia figo known as the Port Wine Magnolia.
The field camera absent while card is read, usually hangs on the back of the wire framed chair with wooden seat.
The bower is behind the left-leaning tree, which is a Hymenosporum flavum
known as a native frangipani in Australia, for its abundant creamy white flowers.
The shrubbery to the left, the backdrop to the bower contains camellia, azalea and currently in bright red orange flowers of Abutilon. Whose flowers he throws away if they fall in the bower., wrong colour.

This below is a bunch of film clips from several days ago, briefly after 2pm, then several after 4pm. A relatively quiet afternoon, though we have no record of what preceded it.

Odimbar calmly does some tidying up, then flies away. Then an immature male practices some things he'd like to do if he turns blue, I called this role the 'Pretender' before, it will still do. Then Odimbar defends his bower against a couple of green birds. Then he gets to show his style, to himself. I keep typing here my speculations about behaviour and maturation... and then erasing them. Time enough for that later.


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