You would be surprised what turns up if you just settle awhile in your own backyard. Often, though, this passing parade of nature is overlooked in our fast, hectic lives.
During recent months we have been forced to slow down a bit and it has provided an ideal opportunity to look at the wonders of nature literally on our doorstep.
Before the coronavirus crisis I had planned to dash off in search of birds in more remote, romantic places other than suburbia but I was forced to take a time-out, birding at home.
I haven’t even needed to raise the binoculars for this bird-watching experience. Sitting at my living room window, the birds have come to me.
Early morning and the sparrows come flying in squadrons from a neighbour’s garden, after I have left my steaming cup of coffee on the windowsill and tossed a few handfuls of rice from last night’s curry onto the lawn.
A brown goshawk has been arriving this past month, hiding in the grevillea which forms a leafy border along the garden fence. The sparrows know they are safe. A new holland honeyeater, the bird which leads what I call the “neighbourhood watch’’, is perched on the NBN cable that stretches across my lawn from the telegraph pole in the street. The ever-alert honeyeater will be the first to warn if the goshawk turns up, issuing its twittering alarm call.
It’s a sunny autumnal morning and I am waiting for birds which usually turn up in early May to show. Each year a party of yellow-tailed black cockatoos arrive to raid a hakea tree in the garden, which borders the Sandy Bay Rivulet in the Waterworks Valley. The black cockies always know when the hakea nuts will be sweet and ripe.
Looking for the black cockies, there is a surprise and an addition to the checklist of wildlife that has been seen in the garden. Not a bird this time, but an echidna waddling through the flower beds and sticking its snout in the cavities between the stones of my rock garden, searching for grubs.
Overhead, a yellow-throated honeyeater sings in a chortle, and then I hear the metallic call of a crescent honeyeater. The crescents have forsaken their summer breeding range on kunanyi/Mt Wellington for the warmer suburban gardens nearer the coast.
Another arrival off the mountain is the eastern spinebill and the tiny honeyeater’s descending, rapid-fire call begins to fill the garden as the sun rises above the treetops. During the day I spot about 30 bird species and as night falls I listen for the call of the boobook owl. The owl does not show but there’s another nocturnal parade: Bennett’s wallaby, pademelon and potoroo.
The birds and animals are mostly stay-at-homes in my garden. Despite wings and swift feet, their lives will likely be lived wholly within sight of my property and the banks of the rivulet. For these creatures, this horizon is all there is. And I’m glad that’s enough.