I used to leave a clump of the horrible asparagus fern as a safety patch for the wrens. They would use it when ever crows, or currawongs were around. They disappeared about 5 years ago, & I had not seen them for a few years.

After last years flood brought the river way over my dam, a clump of reeds appeared in one section. This year the dam is low & the reeds now out of the water have died. I was going to clean them out with this chance, then saw a couple of blue wrens & about 10 jenny s were using it as a sanctuary, & left it.

With this dry year the wrens are again visitors to the bird bath, but the jennies have developed a strange habit. We regularly have had Pewees, Willy wagtails & crows attacking their reflection in the mirrors of cars parked outside. Slipping one of those "single" use shopping bags over the mirrors was standard practice to prevent this. They last about a week in the sun.

However it was always the male protecting his territory from his reflection causing this behaviour. However it is the jenny wrens that appear to be attacking their reflection in both windows, & large sliding glass doors. I have not seen a blue wren at it at all, & attacking is probably too strong a description, but they are spending some time fluttering up & down the glass.

Has anyone heard of this with wrens, particularly the females. At least it has given me the opportunity to see them up very close. It is amazing that something so delicate has the strength to fly.

Hasbeen,

Good to see your interest in birds. I'm a birdwatcher and twitcher, albeit a lazy one these days.

Dear Hassie,

I don't know much about bird species apart
from getting excited over kookaburras and
multi-coloured parrots.

We have quite a few varieties in our garden.
They love the bird baths and the occasional feed.
One of my brothers who lives in Byron has far
more interesting experiences with the range of wildlife.

And your experiences sound wonderful.

More please.

Love birds my garden is as much about them as anything
The jennys visit, never seen them do that BUT we have the dreadful Indian Minor, kills any it can get
Drove Rosellas away, once nested here, Scaly breasted come to feed on massive bottle brush I grow, up to 25 feet high
They have the number to ignore them
Budgie aviaries too suffer from Minor birds but they can not get in
PeeWee, damn terrorist male hits every window wings spread trying to taunt my black and white mini Foxy, same behavior at both neighbors wish we could still own slug guns

At first when I saw the bird droppings localised to a specific part of a housemates alloy bullbar I wasn't know what was going on.
Then I noticed more droppings down the front doors just behind the side mirrors.

I was curious as to what bird might be doing this so I made an effort to look out for and try to spot the feathered culprit.

Then one day I spotted this little fella, it looked kind of like a willy wagtail but I'm not sure that it was, it looked quite young with some bright blue stripes on its face.

Well it seemed to be checking itself out.
It would puff itself up and turn from side to side posing and showing off in the mirror.

I guess it may have thought it was looking at another bird, but the few times I caught sight of him he really looked to me like it was checking itself out...
He was obviously coming back each day to do so, but after a while he didn't come anymore.

We have quite a bit of local wildlife around our place.
When I was making my morning cuppa earlier a wallaby family bounced through the backyard, stopping briefly.

It looked like a mum and dad and 2 kids.
One young wallaby's still small, we've seen them getting around for a couple of months but the new bub is still pretty small about a foot high and very energetic.
It seemed like mum was quickly following the young joey trying to keep up, whilst dad and the older one following behind.
The little joey's out the pouch and keen to explore his new world I suppose...

I expect we will have the ducks making families and wandering around with their 10+ ducklings sometime soon.
- Which is always kind of sad as the trail of ducklings whittle down to just a few when predators get them.

I'm not sure where you are but I assume you talk of the Superb Fairy Wren.

These birds are highly territorial with a family group staking out and defending a feeding area against other groups. Additionally, these birds are spectacularly promiscuous with the females actively ducking off to find other males to copulate with while males tend to wait around for opportunities to come to them. You will often see males pecking at the rear of the female as they check for foreign semen and try to remove it from a wayward female. Research shows that few nests have eggs from just one male and that's its not uncommon for a male to be defending and tending eggs and hatchlings where none are his offspring.

As such, since other males rarely invade other territory, aggressive behaviour between them is not natural. I think this explains the behaviour you see. Females on the other hand are often off in someone else's territory and female fights occur often both to protect food supplies and keep their male faithful. A bit of a double standard there since they are utterly unfaithful.

I find these birds do well in a copse of grevilleas. Sandra Gordon, Robyn Gordon that type of thing. But you need to prune the plants at least every autumn to keep them dense and therefore protective.

Thanks for that mhaze, that is very interesting. South of Brisbane by the way. I have quite a few grevilleas up to silky oaks, but I rarely see the wrens in them. It is the blue faced honey eaters & lorikeets that are usually in them. I have some very thick stands of Calliandra, both white & red, which may offer better protection for them. However we always find them in those reeds, since they grew.

I doubt they would be nesting in them, but some areas of the river bank are very thick, & the crows don't seem to frequent that area at all.

My garden is very wild, over grown & almost bush like, except most of it flowers profusely. I actually had someone tell me they didn't realise there was a house in there behind all the trees & shrubs. I wondered if they thought the trees & shrubs, with driveways through them planted themselves, particularly the 80 hibiscus.

No Silky Oaks are too open and way too tall. They like being close to the ground.

Any dense shrub or small tree would do, so long as they can hide within the branches. I just really like grevilleas (smile).

Cruised into the Endeavour yesterday & two cute little Swallows were darting all over my bow, perched on the anchor, then all over the windshield wiper, hanging around all day ! Magic !

While I love my local birds, I don't like swallows or sea birds all that much.

When I moved ashore off the yacht, & had it moored at Burrum heads, the swallows found it their ideal home. A few dozen would perch on the lifelines overnight, safe from predators, & leave me a message in their droppings.

I had to wash off the actually mound of droppings every second day, or damage to the paint would start.

When I was running tourists in the Whitsundays I had a large 18M by 9M pontoon & a 60Ft imitation submarine coral viewing boat moored out at Hardy reef. The gannets loved it, & roosted on them in their hundreds. The smell of their droppings was such that you damn near needed a gas mask to get close. You could not take a tourist anywhere near it until it was cleaned by a 2" fire hose.

I installed a "squawker" thing designed to scare them off. They loved it, & perched all over it. For a while I was flying a staff member out there by seaplane at $350 a time [in 1980s money], to clean up before the 250 tourist arrived on the boat.

Ultimately I had to install a living quarters module on the pontoon, & have staff live out there. I did hear stories that the skipper who took the job, & his lady were extreme nature lovers, & seldom wore clothes. There were stories that numbers of professional reef fisherman used to gather at the pontoon for parties, but I thought it better not to inquire too closely, as they did the job I required extremely well.

I considered what they did in their own time was their business. You had to be a bit different to live full time on a pontoon 40 miles from the nearest bit of Australia.

The bloke on a mooring 30 yards from my anchorage is wingeing & bitching about birds leaving their calling cards. I have none. I suppose constantly moving about does the trick. Unattended vessels are like a magnet to birds !

Hasbeen well understand how bad those birds must have been
Mate [financial adviser post RTA] wanted a strip of those ribbons used to mark road edges
To keep the birds of his sailing boat
They sat on it and you know the rest
Minors, very very bad for a hundred reasons, but contaminating the rain water tank [my only water supply is the worst
Still nice to know I am not alone in blissing out on a chair watching the birds in my jungle/garden