Here’s someone special. We have a few pairs of the Azure Kingfisher, Alcedo azurea, around Bunjaree Cottages, and since I haven’t written about our birdlife for a while, I thought this fellow was worth an introduction.

These birds aren’t often close to the cottages themselves. Rather, they live in the hanging swamp that occupies part of the property (the bush conservation area).

They can sometimes be seen, however, flying towards “the dam” – which isn’t actually a

The Azure Kingfisher. Photo credit: JJ Harisson. License: Wikimedia Commons. Original at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alcedo_azurea_-_Julatten.jpg

dam, it’s the hole where the clay was dug to build the cottages. While it mostly favours yabbies and small fish, when the weather is right, the dam is a haunt for frogs which attract the kingfishers.

They’re a very beautiful bird, as you can see – so if you’re lucky enough to spot one, consider it a special treat!

White-Throated Treekeeper. Image by “Aviceda”, Creative Commons license.

There’s more than one species of Treecreeper around the Blue Mountains, and they’re very small and fast – which makes it a little difficult for us to decide which ones we’re seeing at Bunjaree Cottages.

It’s quite a cheerful sight, however, when you turn your head at a call and see these fellows sprinting up tree trunks! Whether you spot the White Throated Treecreeper or the Brown Treecreeper, their agility on tree trunks is quite impressive!

When they’re on tree trunks, it’s to feed. Treecreepers browse on ants on the trees, sometimes adding a little nectar for variety.

Listening to the call posted on Birds in Backyards, I suspect the Treecreepers we see most often at Bunjaree Cottages are the White Throated – Cormobates leucophaea if you want the Latin name.

And here is a call I recorded on my my smartphone. I reckon it might make an acceptable ring-tone. What do you think?

(Note – when I posted that snippet to AudioBoo, I hadn’t identified it. My thanks to the local birder Carol Probets for naming it for me!)

First, a caveat: Pardelotes are very small, very fast, and don’t sit still. As a result, I have never seen one long enough to either get a photograph, or identify which species of Pardelote hangs around Bunjaree Cottages.

However, Pardelotes are among the many species of small birds which frequent the bush around Bunjaree Cottages. They pass through in flocks, sweeping between different locations on the site in a group, feeding, chirping, and moving on.

Spotted Pardelote - Image: Wikimedia

These birds are tiny – at 8cm to 10cm, they’re not much smaller than your hand, and are definitely smaller than some of Australia’s biggest moths! They have a quite musical call – Birds in Backyards has calls recorded here for the Spotted Pardelote and here for the Striated Pardelote, and since you’re more likely to hear them than see them, it’s worth listening to.

A lot of people also mistake female Pardelotes for scrub wrens, because their grey-and-olive plumage and small size makes them look a little wren-like.