Bird Watching in Bombay NSW
There are not too many of us that have the patience of a saint. Patience can be an elusive virtue in the 21stcentury. To improve my patience, I find my garden is a great place to learn it. I haven’t always had it, and depends on who you speak with, I may or not have it now. On my quest to learn patience, I also learnt to pay attention. Currently, my favourite way to pay attention in my garden is bird watching.
I attribute tending bonsai as the beginning of learning real patience. Patience that lasts for years. A rushed prune might take years to recover from, some trees never quite recover. Hard lessons to learn, but when I felt I had achieved patience with trees, I became confident that I was a patient person and got on with my life.
Then I met stone. It laughed in the face of my patience. I continued working with stone to learn proper patience. You can’t rush stone; you must meet it every morning with patience. Rushing with stone will quickly bring about a broken finger or foot. Stone requires proper patience or a new line of work must be found.
Bird watching is something that I started as a kid near the ocean. I didn’t know the names of many of the birds back then, but I did note their place in the ecosystem. Each bird having a different way to hunt and eat fish. Sitting still near the ocean can be rewarding.
So, when I became the custodian of this woodland Ecosystem, a field guide was porcured and kept at hand. Not being from round these parts, I was unfamiliar with many of the local birds, and I wanted to know who I was sharing this patch of earth with.
Since starting, I’ve become more aware of my surroundings and every year I spy something new. If you are starting a garden, you may not have the variety I have, but you will almost certainly have different birds to me. Your mission is to attract as many birds to your space as possible, to fill your ecosystem and reap the rewards.
The sheer act of slowing down and paying attention will be of great benefit to your 21st century lifestyle. Noting the types of birds in your garden will inform you on many aspects of your ecosystem. The comings and goings of different birds will eventually allow you to tap into the rhythms of spring/autumn better than any weatherbot.
Xen and the Art of Bird Watching.
There are many benefits to getting our hands in the soil. It’s good to put food on our table, it’s good for our mental health and it’s great for teaching us life skills. If we were living in ancient Japan, I would study gardening as one of my Xen Arts, I would also include Bird Watching.
Mastering vegetable gardening is akin to practicing Xen Arts. Its more about slowing down and paying attention than it is about ultimate knowledge, power or machines. Choosing to work with the available energy/resource and utilising it to get a better outcome.
I love hearing a new bird in the garden, tracking it down and working to identify it. It seems obvious, but different birds fill different places in the ecosystem. They each have their special powers and they thrive in the different conditions that appear throughout the year. In my garden this translates into insect issues being gobbled up promptly by a member of our bird community.
You did what?
We spotted an impressive 66 different birds in 2023, with 16 regulars not seen. I have the entire Big Year listed on my website. The list includes only the birds spied on our hill in Bombay, within earshot of the garden. The garden occupies around ¼ acre, and the rest of our homestead occurs within a 2 acre plot surrounded by 100 acres of bush. We dedicated a full year from Jan 1st to Dec 31st, to dropping tools and chasing every bird we heard or saw.
The rules of the game were simple. We both needed to hear or spy the bird. If it was unfamiliar, we would cross reference books and make at least two sighting and both be confident before listing it. Some birds remain unidentified.
Twitching is real life Pokemon
Bird watching is a little like Pokemon. It’s crazy, but once I started I just “gotta catch ‘em all”. As you can see on the list, there are a lot of owls, but not all that can be spied in our area. Owls are very hard to spot so it is super rewarding to find a new one.
Thornbills are a prolific little bird and originally, I thought it was lots of the same bird. Binoculars showed me there were many types getting round. Once I noticed they were different, it was easy to see that they like to occupy different places in the ecosystem. All doing their bit to keep things in balance. There are more thornbills possible in my area, so I am always on the lookout.
With binoculars in hand, there were many new sightings. Mostly smaller birds like robins, the closeup view showing vast colour differences in our common birds. This suggest to me there are more birds living in or passing through our woodland ecosystem waiting to be spotted. There are also several birds that we often see that we haven’t yet identified.
We rely on our trusty Field Guide to Australian Birds, 8th edition, for identification. We have another 5 reference books and on occasion the internet was used. Our Binoculars are 10×25, a good starting place, but we are looking to upgrade.
Bird watching starts with paying attention. A bird book will help you note new birds to your garden and learn more about them. In time you’ll be noting them at your friends place too. Once you spy them, take the time to note their role in your garden. I find that different birds take up the same space at different times of year. What have you noticed in your garden?
Stay Awesome
The Gordon Gnohm