Backyard birds

It's a bit warm here just now so I've not been out much recently. That doesn't really matter though as there's enough wildlife in the back yard to keep me happy.

Channel-billed Cuckoo with it's Pied Currawong foster parent

We have two young Channel-billed Cuckoos in the trees out the back at the moment. The Channel-bills are the largest parasitic cuckoos and unlike other cuckoo species they can lay more than one egg in the host's nest. This means that, in our case, the pair of unfortunate foster parents are running around after not one but two huge noisy youngsters.

Greedy fat cuckoo

The big spiders are still out in force but I've realised that only the Huntsman spiders are scary and, in fact, the others are all very nice. A Net-casting Spider has been living in the side passage for a while now. By day it pretends to be a stick but in the evening it spins it's web net and waits for prey to pass beneath. It then throws the web down onto the bug and catches it. Magic!

Net-casting Spider