Feral Pigeons pipe dream home
Rock Doves (Feral Pigeons)
We have quite a few Feral Pigeons (Rock Doves) in various places around our home town of Murray Bridge, South Australia. They are present in large numbers around the CBD and the various large factories and other types of buildings around town.
On our way home from visiting the shopping areas we often drive past a used steel and metal outlet. Along the boundary fence they have some large racks on which are stored numerous steel pipes, as shown in the photos. The local feral pigeons have decided that these pipes make excellent apartment buildings. They have been nesting and roosting in the pipes for quite a few years. Obviously there is no great demand for these pipes in the used pipe business.
I’ve often tried to remember to take my camera with to get a few photos of them. I remembered earlier this week.
What I want to know is how they survived the heat of our recent extreme summer. With air temperatures often reaching 48C+ and the sun temperature probably 55-60C, how did they survive. And were the eggs in the nests cooked nicely after several such days of high temperatures?
Rock Doves (Feral Pigeons)
Mooching around Mallacoota, Victoria
Caravan Park, Mallacoota, far eastern Victoria
Last January we had a holiday in Sydney and then drove to Melbourne via Canberra and the south coast. From Eden we drove on towards Mallacoota along a section of the coast we had never visited before.
Our first impressions of Mallacoota were very favourable. The town is on a river estuary and the setting is quite charming. We plan to return here with our caravan some day and stay for a week or more. We intend avoiding the summer holidays. As you can see in the photo above, the caravan park on the foreshore is wall-to-wall tents, caravans, boats, bikes, cars and 4WDs. Not my idea of a quiet holiday spot.
After a very nice meal of seafood in the hotel bistro, we decided to go for a long walk around town in the cool of the evening. I was hoping to get a good list of birds for this area and some photos would have been a bonus.
It was with delight and a little surprise that the first bird I saw upon leaving our motel room was a Common Bronzewing pigeon, shown in the photo below. I am quite used to seeing this species feeding on the sides of roads or flying rapidly across the road in front of the car while driving. I am used to seeing this bird out bush and relatively remote, or least quiet, places. But here was this individual feeding on the lawn a few steps from the back of the motel. It was one street from the main shopping strip and a busy spot. This bird was cautious but not over alarmed by our presence. It was a nice sighting and one of only a handful of this species seen on the entire journey of about 3500km.
Common Bronzewing pigeon, Mallacoota, eastern Victoria
Early morning walk
I’m just back from an early morning walk. It was about 15C, crisp fresh, no breeze and cloudless. A perfect morning for a walk.
As I was going along I was aware of several dozen Little Ravens calling nearby. I’ve been aware of many ravens calling near our home over the last week or so. It’s something they tend to do several times a year. They will gather in large numbers, often 30 – 50 or more and commence calling raucously for ten or twenty minutes or more. After a protracted chorus of their calls, especially near the house, one can feel a little annoyed; it can be a penetrating call up close.
Little Raven
I also observed about a dozen Crested Pigeons sitting on the power lines or feeding on the ground. Several of them were giving their elaborate bowing, bobbing and tail fanning display to prospective mates. This species seems to be always breeding around here. Probably why there’s a growing number of them.
We occasionally have lorikeets land to feed in the trees in our garden but more often they just fly over, very rapidly and very noisily. This morning a flock of 10 Purple-crowned Lorikeets went screaming overhead as I walked along, did a 360 turn wheeling around to check me out (or maybe the mallee tree on the side of the road) before streaking off to find another tree in blossom. It’s like having a miniature squadron of fighter jets fly over at close range. The photo below shows a related species, the equally noisy Musk Lorikeet which we also get here from time to time.
Musk Lorikeet
Birds in the Sydney CBD
The Rocks area, Sydney
While on our recent holiday in Sydney we went into the CBD on several occasions. One of those occasions was to visit the markets in The Rocks area.
My prime reason for going there was as a tourist, not as a birder. Not matter where I go I have to see what birds are around. That’s just me. I simply cannot ignore the birds. (I’ve even been known to keep a tally of birds seen through the windows at church! Go figure.)
The Rocks area is in the heart of the Sydney CBD, an area rich in history with most buildings being of some historic value. It attracts hoards of tourists and local visitors on a daily basis. Despite the numbers of humans, the bird population flourishes.
Rock Doves (Feral Pigeons) are everywhere. They thrive on food scraps from careless people dropping parts of their lunch in the many eateries in the area. I noticed that some are reluctant to even get out of the way as I walked along.
Silver Gulls likewise are in great numbers and also thrive on human food. Circular Quay with its hundreds of thousands of travellers daily on the ferries on Sydney Harbour is only a few steps away.
Pied Currawongs are also present in the treed areas within The Rocks. This is a species that has adapted to an urban environment and also feeds on human throwaways.
The introduced Common Myna (see photo below) is another species that has become a pest in urban zones and can be found in large numbers throughout Sydney.
Common Myna
Crested Pigeon nesting
Crested Pigeon
About three weeks ago I was walking the estate. (We live on a five acre block on the edge of town.)
As I passed a row of Hakea francisiana bushes I checked thoroughly for any bird nests. These bushes, which are about four metres high, often host pigeon or honeyeater families.
Sure enough, a Crested Pigeon was sitting on a nest. I quietly crept away, knowing how easily pigeons can be disturbed from their nests. Sadly, when I checked back last week, the nest was abandoned. Even sadder was the half grown chick hanging from a fork in a branch. It was dead.
Hakea francisiana
Something must have disturbed this young chick which then tried to escape, only to hang itself. The culprit could have been an Australian Magpie (they are feeding young at present), a Grey Currawong ( who will take young from a nest to feed its own), a Brown Falcon (which has been harassing the local birds recently) or even a Little Raven.
On another sad note, today when working in the scrub I found the wing of an adult Crested Pigeon. There was no evidence of who had taken this poor creature.
Nature in the raw can seem so cruel. But then – I could name a few humans who are not exactly innocent of cruelty.