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Tag: Befriending Birds

Published on Leave a comment on Rare Regent Honeyeaters Unexpectedly Spotted on NSW Mid North Coast

By Emma Siossian – ABC Good News

A group of birdwatchers arriving at a nature reserve on the New South Wales Mid North Coast has spotted one of the country's rarest birds before even leaving the car park.

The group had just got to Jolly Nose Mountain Bike Park in the Queens Lake Nature Reserve recently, when an eagle-eyed twitcher spotted a critically endangered regent honeyeater.

According to BirdLife Australia, there have only been five reports of the bird in the Port Macquarie area in the past decade.

Hastings Birdwatchers conservation officer Peter West was one of the few people among the group of about 20 who had seen the species before.

A Conservation-Bred Regent Honeyeater and Chick. 
(Supplied: Lachlan Hall)

"We got out of the car and the first thing someone said was, 'There's a regent honeyeater,'" Mr West said.

"To be honest I didn't believe they were telling me the truth, but it was true.

"The lady who organised the morning had a plan, which went out the window, and I don't think we got very far from the car park at all."

Mr West said they saw two regent honeyeaters in the reserve south of Port Macquarie, feeding with other types of honeyeaters in the trees.…

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Published on 1 Comment on Keep Your Little Friends Happy And Healthy With A Sparkling Clean Bird Bath

IT'S EASY THIS WAY!!!

Lets Keep Their Birdbaths Clean So They Will Be Happy - Just Like We Are With Our Clean Baths:)

Safe and Natural Methods for Cleaning Your Bird Bath

We wouldn't want to take a bath in a gunky tub, so we clean it regularly. And while birds may not be quite as picky as humans when it comes to bathing, that doesn't mean a clean bird bath isn't essential for their health and well-being. Knowing how to clean a Bird Bath and what cleaners to use helps keep birds Safe and Healthy and prevents the spread of disease.

Easy Ways to Clean a Bird Bath

Whether you've got a concrete Bird Bath or any other common type, the methods we're discussing should do the trick. First, dump out any water that's in the bath. Take a moment to look over how dirty it is. If it's just a bit mucky, a quick clean with a natural cleaner like vinegar or Baking Soda may be all you need. But if you see some hardcore stains, it's time to bring out stronger cleaners.

Clean It Naturally With Water

You don't need a cleanser for the majority of bird bath cleanings, as long as you keep it relatively clean and well-maintained.…

Published on Leave a comment on Natural High: Why Birdsong Is The Best Antidote To Our Stressful Lives

From The Guardian Website - Past Edition

Dawn Chorus Day is a good time to celebrate the benefits to mental and physical health of birdsong.
Let us all speak up for protecting the different Species of Birds needing our voice.

A Beautiful Nightingale Photo by National Geographic

When I hear the first willow warbler of the spring, the first cuckoo, or the first booming bittern on my local patch, I feel an enormous sense of comfort and satisfaction. As the poet Ted Hughes wrote about the annual return of swifts, “They’ve made it again, which shows that the globe’s still working…”

It’s International Dawn Chorus Day on Sunday 5 May, and this year the RSPB has released a single of birdsong (currentlyat number 11 in the charts) as part of a campaign to draw attention to the situation facing British birdlife. Populations of once-common species such as the house sparrow, starling and swift are falling fast, while the nightingale, turtle dove and grey partridge are rapidly sliding towards extinction in Britain.

Climate change, intensive farming and pollution are just some of the genuinely existential threats to the future of our birds.…

Published on

San Francisco. When the roads emptied of traffic in March and April because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bay Area residents reported hearing more birds—and they were halfway right.

Jennifer Phillips, a researcher at Cal Poly, and Elizabeth Derryberry, a professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, collaborated to evaluate whether and how songbirds responded to the quieter environment with much less traffic.

They compared the soundscapes and songs of the white-crowned sparrow recorded across the San Francisco area prior to and during the statewide shutdown.

“When I saw photos of an empty Golden Gate Bridge, it struck me just how little traffic there was,” said Derryberry, lead author of the study. “I realized we were in a unique position to look at how changes in human behavior might affect wildlife and what the noise reduction might mean for the songbird we study.”

The researchers found that the birds responded by producing softer songs that could travel over a larger distance, unimpeded by noise. The urban songs also became “sexier” in terms of vocal performance—meaning birds sang a wider range of notes in their song, in a wider bandwidth, during the shutdown.…

Published on Leave a comment on Ben Struggled With Lockdown Loneliness. When Two Lorikeets Started Visiting, Their Friendship Went Viral. ABC

Rainbow lorikeets visiting his window have helped Ben Newmarch through a tough and lonely time.

When two lorikeets started visiting, their friendship went viral. The first time that Sydneysider Ben Newmarch posted a video on TikTok, it instantly went viral. "It's been difficult living alone in lockdown and not seeing people," Ben wrote in the video.

Ben The Sydneysider Finds Cheer With His Lorikeets

The first time that Sydneysider Ben Newmarch posted a video on TikTok, it instantly went viral.

"It's been difficult living alone in lockdown and not seeing people," Ben wrote in the video.

"Then this happened."

In the video, Ben showed an unexpected friendship he made in 2021: two rainbow lorikeets, he called Peter and Jane, who have been rocking up to his window pretty much every day.

It's racked up almost 6 million views, and now Ben's adventures with Peter and Jane - feeding out of his palm, hanging out with him while he's wearing a dressing gown in the kitchen - has a dedicated following of more than 60,000 strangers on the internet.

It all started in summer, Ben told Hack, when he was about to leave the house one day.…

Published on Leave a comment on Outback Sees Biggest Budgie Event In 10 Years – You Should See The Photos And Video!

ABC Alice Springs  By Emma Haskin and Alex Barwick 1st August 2021

Thousands of brilliant budgerigars are flocking to the Australian outback thanks to perfect breeding conditions across the country. Mark Carter, Alice Springs bird watcher and trained zoologist, said that the region has not had a budgie event this big in 10 years.

"There was an event in 2016 which was localised to certain areas," Mr Carter said.

Wonders Of Nature – Show Of Budgies – Australia

"This event involves huge number of birds across the landscape," he said.

Mr Carter said it was hard to comprehend how many birds there were out there at the moment.

"If you do the maths on how many budgies are out there across the landscape, it's mind-boggling,"

He said that there are a few factors as to why the numbers have exploded.

Budgies Love To Flock At Dams Water Holes - 2

"It's a combination of things: We had rain at the perfect time here and they bred up in other parts of Australia and gathered here," he said.

Mr Carter said that those budgies subsequently have stayed and continued to breed resulting in extraordinary numbers across the region.

He said that there was an abundance of food thanks to low cattle numbers and the budgies have "cashed in on that".…

Published on Leave a comment on Anxious, Depressed, Distracted — What If The Cure Is Just Outside?

Author Florence Williams talks trees, cities, and creativity in her new book "The Nature Fix."

You Spend 5 Percent Of Your Day Outside. Try Making It More. At a time when more than half of all people live in cities, the influence of the natural world is at a low ebb, while our understanding of it keeps growing.

Try Spending Some Time Outdoors - It Lifts Your Mood Level

For two decades, Florence Williams could sit on her porch at night and watch the alpenglow on the Rocky Mountains. Then she moved from remote Colorado to Washington, DC, and started noticing the changes.

“I felt disoriented, overwhelmed, depressed,” she writes in her recent book, The Nature Fix. “My mind had trouble focusing. I couldn’t finish thoughts … and I wasn’t keen to get out of bed.”

Williams was suffering, she says, from nature withdrawal. She spent the next three years digging into the science of how nature works on our brain. In short, it makes us more relaxed, more creative, and more socially connected. She traveled to Japan and Finland, the deserts of Utah and the urban forests of Singapore, to study just how much we stand to gain by bring nature back into our lives.…

Published on Leave a comment on The Foods We Eat Have An Impact On Our Mental Health Often – Especially Over Time

THIS LAST YEAR HAS BROUGHT MANY OF US INTO MORE CONTACT WITH NATURE WHEN HAVING TO DISTANCE OURSELVES SOCIALLY. I'VE ALWAYS LOVED TO HEAR THE BIRDS WHEN THEY VISIT NEARBY, WAKE UP EARLY IN THE MORNINGS, SEE THEM IN THE PARKS, AT THE BEACHES, FLYING IN FORMATIONS ON OCCASSIONS ABOVE THE HOUSES IN MY LOCALITY WHEN I STEP OUTSIDE. I'VE JUST PURCHASED A SECOND BIRDBATH RECENTLY, SO I HAVE A DEEPER ONE OUT THE FRONT FOR THE MAGGIES WHO LOVE TO SPLASH IN IT, AND A SHALLOW ONE FOR THE BACK, SO THE SPARROWS CAN REFRESH THEMSELVES TOO. I CAME HOME THE OTHER DAY TO SEE A PIGEON RESTING PEACEFULLY IN THAT ONE FOR QUITE SOME TIME - NOT SO QUICK TO FLY AWAY, AYE? WITH A LITTLE PATIENCE, YOU CAN BEFRIEND SOME BIRDS A LITTLE - ATLEAST WE CAN MAKE OUR YARDS INVITING AND EXPERIENCE PRECIOUS MOMENTS HERE AND THERE ON DIFFERENT DAYS.

Being Around Birds Makes Us Much Happier Says New Science

By Andy Corbley

We see them nearly everywhere we go, we hear them every day, they live in every environment, and now, two new studies have shown their mere presence makes us happier.…