It ain’t half hot

Silvereye and Spotted Pardalote

Silvereye and Spotted Pardalote

We love our bird baths.

We regard them as a good waste of time. The visiting birds bring us so much joy and entertainment. During the warm weather like we’ve been having this summer, I daily refill each bird bath before I have breakfast. This meal is usually eaten in our sun room – just a few metres from several of the bird baths.

During warm weather there is a constant stream of birds coming to drink and/or bathe. Almost every day there is something of note worth stopping to watch. On this occasion I had my camera ready. A Spotted Pardalote and a Silvereye drinking side by side is an unusual sight. They seem almost as if they are chatting about the hot weather – or perhaps even the vintage of the water!

Yesterday I wrote about the Silvereyes that visit our garden (click here to read). The Spotted Pardalote is another frequent visitor to the bird baths and I regard it as a resident breeding species on our 5 acre property. Hardly a day goes by without them visiting the bird bath – in fact, they seem to visit every few minutes during the hottest parts of the day.

The colours on the one shown in the photo above are particularly brilliant. It could mean that it is showing its full breeding plumage.

Pardalote up close

Spotted Pardalotes

My regular daily walk takes me along a road bordering our five acre property and then towards a nearby railway line which runs from Adelaide to Melbourne.  This road has a reasonable collection of remnant mallee vegetation between the road and the fences along nearby farms and other properties.

On a recent afternoon walk my attention was caught by the movement of a small bird in the roadside vegetation. I stopped to have a closer look, edging to within a metre. A Spotted Pardalote was feeding at a height of about a metre. Totally ignoring me it continued to feed while I watched up close. I admire these beautiful little birds whenever I see them, and their cheerful chirping in our garden is always welcome.

I usually don’t take my camera on these walks, so I’ve included a photo I took some time ago of two of this species visiting one of our birdbaths in our garden.

Perhaps I should get into the habit of taking my camera on my walks because I’ve missed some excellent photo opportunities in recent weeks.