We're lucky to live very close to a pretty vast area of rugged bushland with several walking trails and cycle ways throughout. We regularly go walking, or sometimes the kids ride their bikes, and we spot so many different kinds of birds and insects. After lunch today we decided it was the perfect weather for it so off we went.
Some of the bird calls you hear around this area are beautiful, and the birds often fly into our yard. We wake up to rainbow lorikeets, kookaburras and sulphur crested cockatoos either pecking at the bananas on our tree, or fossicking about in the yard for crumbs the kids have dropped.
During our walk today, Eli surprised me by saying ''I just heard a Whipbird Mummy.'' I'd never pointed out or discussed whipbirds with him before, so I asked where he'd heard / learned about them. He informed me his source was Hi-5, an episode where the characters pretended to be bush animals and made a song from different animal noises. I heard the drawn out call twice more, it was definately an Eastern Whipbird, but try as we might we couldn't spot our little feathered friend anywhere. We discovered later this isn't unusual- according to some later research, it's a shy bird more often heard than seen. And another interesting fact, the call you hear is often a duet between a male and female bird. The long note followed by the ''whip crack'' sound is the male, answered by the female's following notes!
We stopped for a drink and snack at a picnic area and once our ''batteries'' were recharged, I suggested we do some creepy crawly spotting- lifting up some fallen branches and bark to see what we could find. The kids excitedly agreed and almost immediately Eli discovered a fat witchetty grub (moth larva). He held it in his flat palm and watched it wriggle, apparently it felt ticklish. I told Eli that Aboriginal people eat Witchetty grubs, and I have heard they taste like chicken! Unsurprisingly he wasn't keen for a taste himself, and gently placed the grub back beneath his woody shelter. Some later reading told us that Witchetty grubs are named after the Witchetty bush in Central Australia, which they feed on. But in our area, they feed on the roots of River Red Gum, and they are also the larva of a different type of moth than the ones in Central Aus.
Lovely weather at the moment as Summer turns to Autumn... still the sunshine but with a nice breeze. Lots more bushwalks ahead for us! If anyone else in Newcastle is interested, Kahibah Public School has a website with some great info on the local walks and cycleways (history etc) and other cool environmental stuff in Newcastle (this blog site won't let me copy and paste the web address, so please Google Kahibah Public School, and click on ''links'' the ''Kahibah & environs''.)
Thanks for reading,
Blogmum.
Some of the bird calls you hear around this area are beautiful, and the birds often fly into our yard. We wake up to rainbow lorikeets, kookaburras and sulphur crested cockatoos either pecking at the bananas on our tree, or fossicking about in the yard for crumbs the kids have dropped.
During our walk today, Eli surprised me by saying ''I just heard a Whipbird Mummy.'' I'd never pointed out or discussed whipbirds with him before, so I asked where he'd heard / learned about them. He informed me his source was Hi-5, an episode where the characters pretended to be bush animals and made a song from different animal noises. I heard the drawn out call twice more, it was definately an Eastern Whipbird, but try as we might we couldn't spot our little feathered friend anywhere. We discovered later this isn't unusual- according to some later research, it's a shy bird more often heard than seen. And another interesting fact, the call you hear is often a duet between a male and female bird. The long note followed by the ''whip crack'' sound is the male, answered by the female's following notes!
We stopped for a drink and snack at a picnic area and once our ''batteries'' were recharged, I suggested we do some creepy crawly spotting- lifting up some fallen branches and bark to see what we could find. The kids excitedly agreed and almost immediately Eli discovered a fat witchetty grub (moth larva). He held it in his flat palm and watched it wriggle, apparently it felt ticklish. I told Eli that Aboriginal people eat Witchetty grubs, and I have heard they taste like chicken! Unsurprisingly he wasn't keen for a taste himself, and gently placed the grub back beneath his woody shelter. Some later reading told us that Witchetty grubs are named after the Witchetty bush in Central Australia, which they feed on. But in our area, they feed on the roots of River Red Gum, and they are also the larva of a different type of moth than the ones in Central Aus.
Lovely weather at the moment as Summer turns to Autumn... still the sunshine but with a nice breeze. Lots more bushwalks ahead for us! If anyone else in Newcastle is interested, Kahibah Public School has a website with some great info on the local walks and cycleways (history etc) and other cool environmental stuff in Newcastle (this blog site won't let me copy and paste the web address, so please Google Kahibah Public School, and click on ''links'' the ''Kahibah & environs''.)
Thanks for reading,
Blogmum.
Sounds like a lovely afternoon of exploring. It's fun to discover creatures. The ones we see most often in the bush across the road here are huge biting ants and mozzies, so we haven't been there much lately. Like you, I love trying to work out where my children learned something which they surprise me with.
ReplyDelete:) Vanessa
What a lovely day!
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