Relax guys, not that kind of birds!!!
Every time I go to do my shopping, there are some birds hanging around the carparks. That gives me the idea to take some photos of the native birds you would find taking advantage of whatever it is you can find there if you are a clever City Bird.
So, I'm starting today with some photos I took in Berwick(Vic), and I will take my camera every day, and document what I find. Please feel free to post your Shopping Centre Birds here. I'm looking forward to see, what you find where you live.
Very nice collection and a great idea! We get Ravens here too! Australian Ravens. Masked Lapwings we usually see frequenting school ovals.
I don't have photos of the shopping centre birds we get around Sydney but here's a list to give you some idea:
-Australian Raven
-Welcome Swallow, lots of Wecome Swallow. They sometimes nest in their huge numbers in underground carparks.
-Crested Pigeon
-Silvereye
-Silver Gull
Introduced species:
-Spotted Dove
-Common Starling
-Common Myna
-House Sparrow
-Rock Dove
Taz
I'll try and remember my camera next time I head to the shopping centre.
However, I'll also list what I've seen here at Casuarina Square Shopping Centre.
- Double-Barred Finches
- Australasian Fig Birds
- Orioles
- Blue-Faced Honeyeaters
- Bar-Shouldered Doves
- Peaceful Doves
- Pied Imperial-Pigeon
- Little Corella
- Red-Tailed Black-Cockatoo
- Galahs
- Brown Honeyeaters
- White-Gaped Honeyeaters
Oh, what a boring part of the country live I in?
I have to say though, even in the big Shopping Centres, they plant many native trees, shrubs and grasses.I have seen different Honeyeaters.But never Silvereyes like Taz, or the best of all, Red-tailed Black- Cockatoos.
Next time you go to the shops, don't forget your camera, life can be full of surprises!
M-L
My shopping cenre is lucky to have a house adjacent to it that plants a lot of dense shrub that attracts flocks of silvereyes and other honeyeaters and small birds :D but it is the silvereyes that always enter shopping territory for some reason. It's great to see that the shopping centres are making an effort to birdscape their place :)
Taz
The only ones I see are the Indian Mynah, Feral Pigeon and the occassional Australian Raven. Our shopping centre is only a couple of years old and I think is pretty much bird proof. Used to see Sacred Ibis, but now the refuse area is inside we don't see them scavenging anymore.
Strathfield Plaza is over populated with Silver Gulls, Feral Pigeons and Indian Mynahs...
I find it very interesting ,how fast native birds find shrubs they feed on. In a big Shopping Centre Car Park like Fountain Gate (Melb), there is not a single tree, they are just extending the Centre, again not a single tree. Just on the other side of the road is a huge Bunnings Complex, they have many native shrubs. One day I waited in the car for a long time, (husbands love to spend time at BunningsLOL), the shrubs had flowers and I never saw that many Honeyeater in one spot. I could have waited there all day. Just proves the point what everyone could do, by just planting more native plants.
M-L
I have twice seen button quails in the Queanbeyan (NSW) car park. The last time was about 18 months ago.
At Logan Hyperdome I saw a couple of Galahs having great fun pulling a huge poly-foam type sign to pieces. I'd been standing under it and was getting covered with the stuff. They just about totally demolished the sign.
Mostly though, we get crows, crows, the odd sparrow, crows, the odd peewee, crows, and more crows. Where there are trees, the Rainbow Lorikeets will roost at night, but heaven help any cars parked under them.
Karen
Brisbane southside.
Around Adelaide the developers are keen on getting rid of any native vegetation & replacing it (when they do replace it) with introduced species such as plane trees. However, to demonstrate their environmental credentials, the developers of the Burnside Shopping Centre extensions have encased a large river red gum (which stood in the way of their good works) in a glass building with a gap at the top for air to enter. To further demonstrate these credentials they hired an expert who has reportedly fertilized the tree. Needless to say, the tree is now showing signs of stress. The indoor coffee drinkers who sip beneath the boughs of the red gum are currently oblivious to the dangers of falling limbs as the tree dies. Ah, what we do for progress.
Yes Woko, what next? We could put up paintings of trees and birds? But we will have to do it quickly, before people will have forgotten what trees and birds looked like. We should'n forget to make recordings of the way birds sang.
M-L
I do think we need more recordings of bird call, and pics to go with the birds and about their habitat and food, along with culture (do birds have their own culture?) as well. It is difficult to find all you need or want to know about a bird in one place. Australia birds is a good place to start, and a website where people can add more as they find it out. What do you think?
Karen
Brisbane southside.
Hi Karen, if you read what Woko said about" the tree encased in glass" inside a shopping centre, and the perversity of it, then read my response to it, you should understand the irony of it. I'm pointing into the future, and if we will go on destroying it at the rapid rate we do, all that will be left might be distant memories of what it looked like. So lets take photos now to hang them up later, to remind people of what trees and birds looked and sounded like, when we still had some.
As for" culture"? .........
M-L
Sorry, I did understand what you meant, just I went off on another tangent (a pet peeve because I can never find the info I am looking for). But such a site would be great for the future as well. Better though if we could convince people in high places of the true value of our birds and wild life, and the need to protect their habitat. (There I go, wandering off again. The whole subject is so big, so important, all aspects of it.)
Karen
Brisbane southside.
You're so right, Karen. It's huge. Getting the one repository for all bird information would be a massive undertaking, one for a computer boffin of immeasurable talent. The plethora of field guides is just one indication of how much uncollated information exists. I note in an rjwaring post that there is Michael Morcombe's eGuide to the Birds of Australia. Perhaps that could be a starting point, especially since the blurb says it includes about/over 600 bird calls.
One of the difficulties in all this is that it would require considerable cooperation from existing publishers of information as well as collecting all the information that birdwatchers have locked away in their note books & scribble pads. And what about all the photos that are posted on this forum? It depends on how comprehensive people would want the site to be & what people would be prepared to pay for it. The best that could be aimed for would be, as the bureaucrats would say, an optimally comprehensive database. (Watch that one hit the buzz word lists - if it hasn't already).
As for bird cultures I suspect that's what we call bird group behaviour.
Araminta, you'll be interested to know that some years ago Adelaide City Council installed speakers in the Adelaide Parklands that would play bird calls - at 20c a pop. I don't know if they still exist. I suspect they may have been taken over by parking spaces so let's hope Council got some good photos of those speakers with their coin slots.