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