Bird Watching: Whopper - heading towards independence at a leisurely pace., 1 by MargaretK

MargaretK wrote:
Duc, I'm so sorry your trees are being damaged. It must be distressing to watch and not be able to do anything about it. I remember dellrose's heartbreakingly graphic description of listening to trees on their property cracking and breaking during an ice storm a few years ago. We have a huge eucalypt in the yard, easily 100' tall. It is responding like so many native trees do in a drought - it self prunes by shedding limbs. The last two days in a row it has dropped one large branch and a smaller one. There may be more over the next few days.

A beautiful Banksia on the verge that the Black Cockatoos loved to feed on split in half and fell across the road about three weeks ago. The tree surgeon from the council that came to have a look said it was just doing what native trees do when under stress but unfortunately this one was unsalvageable and had to be razed to the ground. Here's a shot of the Banksia in flower with a New Holland Honeyeater feeding on the rich nectar.

Burn, I agree. Long stretches like this are really hard to cope with.

I actually went down the nest for about an hour yesterday late afternoon. Whopper was in the shade below the nest, but I couldn't get any shots as she was mostly hidden by foliage.

Edited because I said Harmony was below the nest, not Whopper. The heat's getting to me.

This message was edited Feb 26, 2011 1:53 PM