Brush turkey

We've had brush turkeys hanging around near our place for a couple of years now and this year they've chosen to build their nest in the front yard of one of our neighbours.



There's an access path that runs down between their place and the next to the bush reserve behind our houses (we're a couple of houses further down), so there's plenty of material for the birds to work with and the mound is quite an impressive size.

Brush turkey on top of mound



The nest



The rest of the nest



I took a short video too, nothing special but I thought I'd throw it up here anyway.



The turkey scratched its way to the fence and then headed on up and over into the backyard of the next house.



As I was coming back from taking these photos I feel into conversation with the owner of that backyard. Apparently the turkey had been doing some heavy duty work in her yard and had done a great job collecting all the fallen debris from the lawn with the clear intention of adding it to the nest. Of course there was the minor detail of a fence in the way so after all that hard work it'd had to leave the mulch piled up against the fence. My neighbour scooped it all up and chucked it in her green bin (for garden waste), she's quite pleased, it saved her a whole heap of work :)

All that nest building paid off

Remember our brush turkey neighbours and the enormous nest mound they built?

It worked. This evening there were three juvenile brush turkeys wandering around in our backyard. They look even less interesting without the bright red heads and brilliant yellow necks of the adults and they really didn't want me getting too close but I managed to grab a few photos.

Beautiful plumage!

Our back deck has a number of regular visitors.

There's the rainbow lorikeets who cling to the fly screen and screech at us demanding breakfast.

There's the possum who comes every evening to clean up anything the birds leave behind.

There's the crimson rosella who with great daring braves the wrath of the lorikeets to try for a share of the apples and bird seed (it never works, those lorikeets are fierce!).

And very occasionally we get the King Parrots who are regulars at our neighbour's back deck and rarely grace us with their presence. One of them dropped in yesterday when the kids were doing their homework and for once the camera was in a sensible spot.

We also get plenty of cockatoos - one year we had 2 chicks take up residence in the backyard and persecute the cats. There's nothing funnier than a huge cat being chased by a half-naked bird. A tawny frog-mouth can sometimes be seen perched on the clothesline, Kookaburras hang out in the pine tree in the back corner of the yard, and just a few weeks ago Adam saw a huge owl sitting on the gutter at the front of the house. We even had the brush turkey drop in for a visit, Clara was intrigued but wary, she wouldn't go out into the yard with it there - not that I wanted her to! The door was open and at first I didn't know why she was refusing to go out.

Birds make me happy.

Saturday Fragments

I was going to post this yesterday but, as I completely forgot about it until just after midnight and hadn't actually written any of it yet, it has become a Saturday Fragments instead of a Friday Fragments post. 

This is a sort of "what I did last week" as recorded on Facebook with some elaborations.

Saturday

• Plan for the day: drink tea, wash the dog, spend the rest of the day courting the dog's forgiveness, go to @shonias' place for dinner - I washed the dog, she was not amused. While we were out for dinner Tom delivered the amusing quote of the week:
• Context free Tom: "Dad, it's not the size that matters, it's how hard it is." - it was actually in reference to choosing a rock with which to crack macadamia nuts.

Sunday

• Dog just whacked herself on her own nose with her madly wagging tail. There was an audible THWACK! - she surprised herself into almost biting it too, we laughed.
• We're in the car on the way to the beach. It has just started raining. Why are we doing this? - we were doing it because the week leading up to this point had been the hottest week Sydney had experienced in 150 years, over 40°C most days. When we'd arrived home at 1:00am on Sunday morning the outside temperature was 30°C (86F), turns out it was the warmest night ever recorded for Sydney.
• We went to the beach. Didn't stay for long though! - the southerly change arrived bring winds and rain and the temperature had dropped to around 20°C by the time we got back home.

• At Eastern City chinese for their Chinese New Year Lion Dance banquet - Tom got to feed a red envelope to the lion:

Offering the red envelope

About to get his head munched!

Chinese New Year Lion Dance

Monday

• Mmmmm Adam is baking sourdough, house smells goooood. Monday, so far you're turning out ok!
• Brush turkey in the front garden! - the local breeding pair is still at it.

Tuesday

• Quiet summer evening, birds in the garden, cool breeze from the open doors, sun filtering through the leaves of the liquid amber #lifeisgood

Wednesday

• You know, life was so much easier during school holidays. Why do my kids (ok, and I) have to DO so much STUFF? Oh yeah, coz it's fun :-) - At drama class I was an Egyptian priest trying to perform a ceremony to Osiris in front a group of unruly kids, a role I invented for myself, we had a passage from the Hymn to Osiris to work with as an exercise - deliver it any way you want.

Thursday

• I did something to my ankle last night, it hurts. Don't know what I did or when, but ow. And I'm on my feet at canteen half the day today - the ankle behaved ok but the sauna-like environment of the high school Canteen nearly did me in, I was not a happy vegemite.
• Was feeling grumpy. Option A: Pick fight with husband. Option B: Unpack and repack dishwasher & tidy kitchen. I chose B #goodidea #notgrumpy - Thursday was a whingey, grumpy sort of day all round really.

Friday

• Blah, crap morning so far but better things ahead. Should get going or I'll end up late to my morning tea with @ChallyZatB - Friday started badly but got better.
• BTW, the day that started crap turned into lovely morning tea with @ChallyZatB, yummy Japanese lunch w/ my dad and a swim w/ kids in arvo - we went to Pymble Pool late in the afternoon, my mum and one of Tom's friends came too and Adam met us there after work.

Saturday

• Packemin Productions' Joseph is fabulous. It gets extra good marks for the wonderful plus size singers and dancers in the cast! - I love Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, it was the first musical I saw on stage as a kid, and this production did not disappoint! Caitlin and I went to the 2pm performance today.

From the Packemin website:

This pro-am production will feature a massive cast of talented musical theatre performers - and will also involve a number of schools in the local area to provide voices for the choir.

Go see it if you can, they've done a fantastic job with the kids and the professional part of the cast were great too :-)

I'm linking up very belatedly with Mrs 4444's Friday Fragments, click on through to see what everyone else has shared this week!

Hosted by Mrs4444.