This story is one of birds. It starts with an empty paddock and ends with a sunny afternoon here in early Winter, sitting on the front deck with the screech of cockatoos, the willy wagtail angrily wig wagging his fan tail, magpies fooling about with bark in the gum trees, parrots eating the last of the olives and three gang gangs having J. rush for the camera, and as usual, not really being able to capture their spirit at all.

GangGangs In the Sugar Gums
But first, a confession: we aren't photographers, and despite trying, we haven't ever really captured all the birds around here, though we've meant to. So all the beautiful bird photos you see here are mainly from from birdlife.com.au unless otherwise sourced.

The Big Birds

When we first got here, there were a few existing gum trees on the property and of course the street had wattles and gums, and across the walking track there was a row of pines and a plantations. So big birds have always been here. My husband's English, and he couldn't believe how cacophonic Australian birds were. His little comedy skit on how we ended up with all these screeching, noisy birds went a little like this:

God: 'Right, you lot, time to figure out where to put you. Robin, show us your stuff'
Robin: 'Tweet Tweet' cute falsetto tweeting by Jamie
God:'Aw, we like you! Aren't you a little treasure! Off to England with you!'
Cockatoo: 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHH'
God: 'Ye Gads - that's quite a racket!! Of you go to Australia!'

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However, magpies are generally an exception - if you've ever heard an Australian magpie, they sound like they've just dropped straight out of Heaven (if I'm going to continue the religious reference), although we all know they full well got kicked out for pulling God's beard. They are mischeivous things. Please do yourself a favour and listen to the sound of their song. I used to really miss the maggies when I lived in England - so much so, I'm ashamed to say, I used to watch Neighbours just to hear them in the background.

Often they adopt you, coming to see what food you might have for them. Their families stay in the area for decades. They will never swoop those they recognise but passing walkers and cyclists are doomed in the Spring when they dive bomb them to protect their nests. Magpie beaks draw blood!!

Whilst we loved the big birds, we wanted attract the wealth of other amazing birds that are so beautiful in Australian gardens. We needed to figure out how to plant for birds, and thus thought about all the different kinds of plants they would need:

Grasses: for shelter, seed and nesting material. Various lomandra varieties both formed edges and filled gaps in the native beds, so that was easy. We also had some kangaroo grass and wallaby grasses (yeah, I know right - SO Australian!)

Groundcovers and Wildflowers: These would provide nectar, seed, and insects. We planted a few of the smaller, groundcover grevilleas and banksias such as 'Birthday Candles' for this.

Shrubs: Again, for shelter, insects and nectar. Banksia again, and grevillea!! The bonus is that these flowering plants also attract bees, so a win win. J. also liked correa and callistemon but they reminded me of school, where they were commonly planted, so they were placed in a part of the garden I couldn't see from the house. We also planted melaleuca and leptospermum, which was one of my favourites.

Trees: For nests, nectar, seed and insects. We were lucky enough to have our fenceline on one side already loaded up with gum trees, but there was 5 acres to plant with a variety of eucalyptus.

The Rewards of BirdScaping

We spent alot of energy planting out the garden for birds, and we rewarded not only with a beautiful garden, but hundreds of birds. The added bonus, from a permaculture perspective, was that we'd created shade and microclimates where we could also interweave a food forest.

After we had done all of that and discovered for ourselves, we found this beautiful and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED book all about 'birdscaping' which was a fabulous find. It's a beautiful book to thumb through, and we were pleased to see that we had nearly everyone of the birds they featured - we'd gone from a handful of birds to over fifty. There's also a handy table at the back that tells you all the plants to plant and which ones attract what birds, so if you're starting your own native garden for birds, I'd highly recommend this.

Gorgeous Tawny Frogmouths

So I thought I'd introduce you to some of the birds we have a-fluttering around our self-made paradise.

The Teeny Birds

The teeny birds are not always polite and pretty, because a willy wagtail can be so territorial and noisy, fanning his black tail and chck chck chcking at any birds who might get in his space.

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The tiny New England honeyeaters fluff themselves up to puffballs in the bird baths (and we always make sure we have a lot of them, plus a fishpond, to attract them and keep them alive in the summer heat). The silvereyes, finches and sparrows dart between the protection of the trees and rustle the red flowering gum outside the kitchen so it looks like a living thing about to take off across the garden.

The pardelotes are my favourites though - they are Australia's tiniest bird. We made a bird box just for them as the sparrows had kicked them out of the fusebox and we didn't want to lose them. They really are the sweetest things.

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The sound of a pardelote echoing through the garden brings joy to my heart

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The Parrots

The parrots feast on the grass seeds and the olives. They're pretty noisy too, but make splendid splashes of colour in the garden. They're also the most spectacular ones for overseas guests, who can't believe they even exist outside a bird cage. Mind you, the guests are quite blown away by the sound of kookaburras too. It's hard for them to sleep in the bus in the morning as the noise of birds is so loud.

We built nesting boxes for the parrots, and that's where the birdscaping book came in handy, as there were great instructions in there about the dimensions needed for specific groups. We ended up building one for the pardalotes and one for the parrots.

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The Fly-Bys and Sky Birds

We have flocks of pelicans pass overhead, as well as geese. Giant wedgetailed eagles chase off cockatoos and the magpies try to chase them off in turn, but they're the king of birds and don't bat an eye. Grey ibis fly elegantly past (what J. calls an ibi-fly-by) and kites dive down for mice in the grasses. We've also been blessed with a white goshawk which are quite rare. He came and sat above our compost heap looking for our mice - the kookaburras do that sometimes too.

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LoveBirds

I do adore our birds but J's far more obsessive than me, and he gets such an innocent, boyish, excitable energy come across him when he sees them. Sometimes, admittedly, I'm impatient - I'm busy doing something and he's like: 'Look, over there, in that (non descript) tree at that (tiny bird I can't see) amazing BIRD!' and I'm like - oh, leave me alone already, it's another bird.

We bought the birdscaping book for our anniversary together, and we wrote in it but hid what we wrote from the other until we were done. What we'd written did make us giggle:

This post is in response to @katysavage who asks us to tell us a bird story. You can see her original post here - she's offering a share of Steem Basic Income, and if you're not sure what that is, head over to @steembasicincome to find out.

What birds do you have in your gardens? I hope you've enjoyed this walk through our bird life - we have many tales of birds but that's for another day.

I'm also totally honoured to be a passenger on the #ecotrain - check out this hashtag for some pretty amazing posts permaculture to meditation, environmental issues to food forests - I highly recommend checking out this tag as you're guaranteed of sweeeetness!

Plus, I'm super excited and honoured to be part of @tribesteemup - a heap of amazing crew who all post quality posts about helping the Earth and humanity and generally making the world a better place. You should definitely check out the #tribesteemup trail to find some quality writing.