Our late bearing absolutely loaded apple tree is a great attraction to lots of birds. It started with the Green Rosellas, Silvereyes and Blackbirds, then in moved the Yellow Throated Honeyeaters, Crescent Honeyeaters and New Holland Honeyeaters. Lovely to watch them hang just about upside down and inside out picking at the apples. Next came Black Currawongs, but only for a short while as they are now being chased out by Yellow Wattlebirds, who definitely think they own all the apples, and will not share their pickings with any of the other birds. As soon as one dares to land in the tree, they are immediately attacked and with a lot of screeching and clapping of wings chased out!
The small birds have all but given up, but the Black Currawongs fight back. All to no avail, every argument and some real fights with feathers flying everywhere, are won by the Yellow Wattlebird who now seems to have proclaimed himself KING OF THE APPLETREE!!
While none of the other birds is even allowed to land in the tree but banished to left-over pickings on the ground, the Black Currawongs are not even allowed that anymore. Obviously black-banned!
Interesting to see the Rosellas never give up, there's always one brave one who flies into the tree, and since there are often about a dozen of them, the feisty warrior does not get much time to eat.
We also have some clever free-range chickens - saw one chase a rabbit away from the apples! - and they too are tolerated by the self-proclaimed Apple King, either they are too big to tackle or because don't bother to fly up into the tree.
All interesting behavior and very entertaining! No need to feel sorry for the Currawongs though, late in the afternoon when all others have disappeared they return in force to have a peaceful apple-picking feast all by themselves with no interference from those bullying Yellow Wattlebirds!
Hereby some photos I took yesterday of some of our visitors.
Kind regards!
Annette
Hi all, lovely photo,s, I,m really interested in Johns interest in binoculars mine are nickon, should be called nickoff as cant see a bloody thing thru them ,either a prob with the lenz or else I,m blind, maybe a bit of both... Brad.x.
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