Daddy rosella brought back one baby several times today to feed in our grevillea. This happened 2 years ago as well; after leaving the nesting box the 2 babies came back to the grevillea with their father only. I'm not sure how many babies we had, but rosellas have continued to visit and guard the box and in the last few days we've seen a female go into the box and stay inside when the male flew off. We may have a 2nd nesting!
Baby still has its yellow beak
Beautiful colours Birdgirl thanks for that. I am just going to post some babies too..... yellow beaks too.
Sunshine Coast Queensland
The colours are great, nice photo.
Thanks for that. It is a beautiful baby. I found your comment on flickr birdie. You are more dedicated than I - I am not the dawn type. I am looking forward to seeing your dawn photos of the baby catbird though - take enough for both of us. LOL. This morning a rosella was just resting in the nesting box as if she was guarding or had eggs, not as if she was feeding hungry young, so I think we may have a second lot
SO far my baby Catbird efforts have been abysmal. This morning the parents had it nearby and they were smarter and all the mango went but the baby stayed tucked away in the bushes over the fence :( At one stage it flew to the ground and hopped along towards their nesting area. I am so worried about the cats in the neighbourhood. I think it would be too big for the other birds to swoop on hopefully.
Sunshine Coast Queensland
What a great shot Birdgirl! Dawn is the best time to be out too so you are missing out big time! :) In this instance with your shot it would benefit from a little fill flash. Or depending on how you meter the scene you can get away without it. You can expose for the bird, but blow out the sky, or expose for the sky (which I think the camera may have automatically done here) and underexpose the bird. Still, looks fabulous and far nicer than any rosella in my collection. :) Huge congrats! :)
Thanks all.
Windhover I don't think my flash would go that far - it's only the on-camera flash. I was inside the house and the tree is about 10m away and the nesting box is about 8m up the tree. It's been raining all day as you can see by the raindrops on the box. I usually use aperture priority and expose for the bird when I have a yucky white or grey sky. I did this here. At least it means I get a fair picture of the bird, although I can completely lose the sky, as I did in the pics I took of the mother galah feeding young.
It really does look as we have a second nesting happening, so we're thrilled, and hope it doesn't get too hot in the next 8 weeks. The baby rosella that left the box has been visiting again today.
ps the first photo was taken very late in the afternoon (about 7pm) when the birds came in, so I had to use 800 iso (I probably sound like a dimwit talking in iso but I still think like the user of an slr - I am slow to change so I probably shouldn't get a new camera for at least 10 years)
ps I nearly said asa - that would be even worse!
ASA.............ROTFL.... how old are you Birdgirl???? Even with digital it is still referred to on camera as ISO so don't worry about that. I have to shoot at 1600 most of the time which is why you get the "noisy" looking shots in low light. It is either that or no picture at all. You mean all your nesting box pics are done from inside or just when it is raining???
I have heaps of catbird shots done from my bedroom ..... silly though I forgot to close the window today so ended up shooting through two layers of dirty window!! I must clean them .
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Hi birdie - we are probably of about the same vintage as I have an 11 and 13 yo. I don't know ROTFL though - that is a new one for me. What is it? Did you notice before when I said my first Kodak camera had a magicube flash? Four sides with a bulb on each side and a bulb blew each time you took a flash photo and you had to rotate the flash 90 degrees to get a new bulb.
I'd rather have noisy pics than none at all, especially of our babies, which are special to us. I go outside on a fine day to take photos of the nesting box, but it is usually silhouetted against the sky
Birdgirl I love your photos. I was wondering if you put nesting material in the box every year and how much? How long does it take before you see the babies? Just curious as I have some pale-headed rosellas using a nestbox on my house but have been unsuccessful every time. Thanks.
Hi scorpios13, thanks a lot for your kind comment.
We put gum leaves that have fallen from our trees into the galah box - about 15 cm deep - and the galahs add fresh leaves every day when they are bringing up the young. When they leave the pile is more than 30 cm high.
We usually put some bark chips and gum leaves in the rosella box to stop the eggs and babies rolling around when it is windy, but when the babies leave the box is empty. So they get rid of it all at some stage.
With eastern rosellas, they take 3 weeks to hatch and 5 weeks to fledge. We had some problems with babies dying and noticed the babies had bird lice. My husband puts lice powder in the nesting material (pyrethrin based) and powders the babies a couple of weeks after they hatch while the parents are away from the nest. It seemed to help their survival.
As you are new, I'll re-post some of my old pics - I love showing them but apologies to those who have seen them, especially more than once
This spring we had 6 in one box and 4 in another
The babies have yellow beaks
Sometimes the second and third babies are weak. This is Donald. He took 10 days after leaving the box to leave the yard. There seemed to be something wrong with his wings. We saw him eventually fly though
Donald's parents never gave up on him. They kept coming back to feed him, even though his brother had left 2 days before Donald jumped out. This is his father grooming him
We grew to love Donald and he didn't mind us!
This is Huey, our first baby the next year. Some years we can't understand what goes wrong. 2 years ago the galahs laid three eggs. We had a camera in the box so we could watch them on our tv in black and white! They fed the first baby, Huey, and seemed to ignore the second and not feed it. It disappeared. The 3rd egg did not hatch and disappeared. Huey was strong and healthy and flew very well when he left.
Thank you Birdgirl for your reply and information about the nestboxes. I think your photos are beautiful and your little stories to go with them are very interesting.
In my nestbox which pale-headed rosellas have nested 3 times this past season, but nothing has ever hatched, I put bark fibre (from inside the bark), but I'm thinking it wasnt deep enough because the female scrapes it away until she is on the hard surface of the box and that is where the eggs sit. I wonder if they dont hatch because they roll around. Also because as Araminta suggested, they may be an old or young couple, but this I dont know. This spring I will change the box to a deeper one and put plenty of nesting material in it so she cant scrape down to the bottom of the box.
Anyway, thanks again for your reply and lovely pictures.
Oh these are wonderful photos. The Rosella's are so colourful. I adore the Galah's. Beautiful photos :)
Thank you both. We love watching the babies.
scorpios13 - we suspect that the rosellas don't want the nesting material in there because they always get rid of it (although they didn't in the nesting with 6 above). We put some in anyway to give them a start.
Wow amazing photos Birdgirl, I love Donald.