Tawny Frogmouth

My block in Bridgetown is home to a large variety of birds. The noisy chatter of honey eaters is always a wakeup call; they only need the slightest ray of morning light, and they are up and about.

The silver eyes also swarm in numbers at the crack of dawn making a din. My other bird residents the magpies, mudlarks, kookaburras and wrens are all up at a reasonable hour. Although, when there is a full moon, or even a glimmer of some moonlight, the magpies do chortle all night.

And of course there are a lot of visiting birds such as , 28’s, red crested parrots, green parrots, willy wag tails, black cockatoos, crows, ducks and hawks all making an appearance at differing times throughout the year.

One bird, however always manages to surprise me, it is the tawny frogmouth. Several years ago, while I was mowing my paddock, I stopped the mower and got off to pick up a lump of wood which was in the way. As I reached down to pick it up, the lump winked at me, it surprised and startled me, sending me backwards cursing.

Over the years I have had less surprising but similar encounters with the tawny frogmouth, only spotting them through their camouflage when they winked.

Being a nocturnal bird, they sleep during the day. So, I managed to come across their roosting spots only quite by accident. At times when picking fruit, trimming branches or like one year I spotted a couple of them roosting on a wood heap that I was about to set fire to.

The family of tawny frogmouths this year have now gone on to produce a couple of fledglings, and again I didn’t spot them until they winked at me.

This happened as I was mowing down hill, I managed to get myself into bother when I jammed the ride on mower up against a tree, I had to dismount and while I was struggling to free the mower, I spotted four branches blinking. I assumed they were either amused by the dilemma I had got myself into, or was it a response to the fact they been rudely awakened.