There's a wide variety of flora and fauna in the Bathurst area, and because our property is sandwiched between two large pieces of commonage with a range of vegetation, many birds make use of our garden as a corridor. It's not always so easy to get photographs of them, but we keep trying. Here are a few we've managed to capture.
There are three species of hornbills found around Bathurst. The Ground Hornbill is less common and is endangered. It's quite large (about 90 cm) and is largely terrestrial. This is a male bird, evidenced by its plain red throat pouch. The females have a blue central patch on their pouches.
Next there's the Crowned Hornbill (50 to 57 cm) which is quite common and is credited (among other things) with spreading cycad seeds. They're pests if you have pecan trees because they steal the nuts (which are about the same size as the cycad seeds) before you have a chance to collect them! These specimens come to see us daily to partake of the bread crumbs on our feeder tray.
There's also the Trumpeter Hornbill (58 - 65 cm) which is almost as common as the Crowned Hornbill, and seems to live mostly on wild figs. I don't have a photograph of one at the moment because they tend to frequent the upper canopy of the trees, but I'll put one up when I get a decent shot.
We also have about six species of sunbird. They're nectar gatherers with down-curved beaks, and obviously have to be quite small to be able to perch on flowering stalks. Here's a Greater Double-collared Sunbird (14 cm).
and here's a rather blurry one gathering nectar from our bauhinia tree.
And then there are the Hadeda Ibises. They're large (76 cm) raucous birds that love underground insect larvae, so they're welcome in our vegetable patch any time. It's amusing to see their disdain for our cats who "stalk" the Hadedas, but the birds just eye them and continue with their foraging. We all know that the cats will never allow themselves to get too close to that beak!
Two families of Red-necked Francolins live in the hedgerow next to our vegetable patch, and they raid it regularly! They're about the size of a domestic chicken (40 cm) and although they're smaller than the hadedas, they still manage to intimidate our cats.
