Norwood’s Parade of Animals
Dear Reader:
It has been rather a grey week but today the sun is showing its face at regular intervals and there is a blackbird singing in a tree above me. A good day for a walk around Norwood admiring the architecture before grabbing a bite to eat at one of the many restaurants and hotels that make the area a premier dining destination. But this old, established suburb with its towering trees and well-tended gardens also provides meals and homes for a wide variety of urban wildlife.
Juvenile male blackbird
One of the classic hotels in the Norwood area
Blackbird aside; the first indigenous species that grabs my attention is living between the petals of a bright yellow daisy bush. The diminutive flower spider hunts amongst the blooms for small insects. This one has ambushed a fly and is proceeding to wrap it in a web for a late afternoon snack.
Flower spider with lunch
A little further down the street I can hear the call of lorikeets as a pair of the colourful little parrots forage in the trees for seed and blossom. I follow them closely as they fly from the tree tops to a smooth barked gum tree right on the edge of Osmond Terrace, a busy boulevard that cuts through Norwood. Here, with traffic whizzing past, they are investigating a hole in the trunk as a potential nesting site.
Rainbow lorikeet feeding
Rainbow lorikeet scouting for real estate
Taking a closer look
Hey honey come take a look
Osmond Terrace is also home to a group of Australian magpies. I can see a raggedy nest high in one of the liquid amber trees that line the thoroughfare and when I focus the long lens on it, the head of a large chick is just visible. After ten minutes an adult bird arrives with a grub in its beak. A few minutes later I catch site of another bird digging for invertebrates in the lawn of a local school while a third sits, watching from the concrete facade of Vine House, one of the suburb’s historic buildings.
Magpie feeding
Keeping an eye on proceedings
My final stop is Finn MacCool’s Irish Pub for lunch where a group of pigeons is also enjoying an alfresco bite to eat in slightly less salubrious circumstances. I started with an introduced species…might as well end on the same note.
Common pigeons feeding on crumbs in the street
Until our next adventure
Cheers
Baz
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