Butterfly Day

Yesterday was Butterfly Day. Once a year or so we get millions of butterflies fluttering by in unison, going where only they know. This time they were all going north. Sometimes it is so dense it is like a cloud of butterflies. It was a wonderful day for us and our birds, too.

We have been watching Vicky's nest anxiously, especially after Sophie lost her nest and her two bubs. We had been away the previous day and there was rain, so we hoped nothing bad had happened. When we trecked over to the nesting area, we found that Vicky's nest was empty. After a look around, we spied Maggie some way off, so we went to check. And nearby was our new bub, Josie, fresh out of the nest and calmly sitting nearby. A little wary, she was partly hidden, but she was calm enough and gave us a smile and let us take some photos. One-year-old Wendy was there too, but no sign of Vicky herself!

Earlier in the season, Maggie and Vicky had showed us a certain tree, so we went to it and checked it carefully. And there was Vicky, sitting on a fresh nest already, with Josie just one day out of the old one! Hmmm.... That raised a good question: where was three-year-old Sophie? Had she started another nest somewhere to replace her wrecked one? (We didn't find it yesterday, but Gitie found it today.)

After socialising with Mags and his family for a while, we suddenly heard Larry the grey butcherbird calling. I have to admit in public that I love Larry. His territory is beyond our property, and he isn't normally allowed to fly here by the other butcherbirds, so we feed him near our boundary and he flies away with his piece of bread and cheese. A few years ago, during a spell of very good bug-hunting weather, we had not seen Larry for some six weeks or so, when a huge ruckus erupted in our front yard. A large python was slithering towards our house, and the magpies and noisy miners had gathered to squark at it and repel it. And there in the gang, risking his life on our behalf, was Larry! It is very impressive that any of them confront a snake on our behalf, but at least the rest treat our yard as their yard; Larry was flying into foreign territory simply to help protect us. And after the snake was repelled, he flew back to his territory for another month or so until conditions worsened and he wanted a bit more cheese.

So when we heard Larry yesterday, we simply had to treck off to his territory to see what he wanted. He called, and sat on an exposed branch across the gully so we could see him easily. So I went down into the gully and up the other side to where he was. Once I arrived, I found his mate Harrie was also waiting, and she flew up into the tree above. With the density of foliage it was hard to follow her flight, but Gitie saw where she went into the tree, and we then spotted her in her nest. Larry's singing was so very, very happy that he had had a visit from his human friends. There has been hard rain since and the ground is too sloshy to risk going down and up the slopes of the gully, but as soon as things dry out a bit, I'll be paying Larry and Harrie another visit.