#bird-attracting

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Luscious green screen: Myoporum acuminatum

Some native plants are just so useful and practical I really don’t understand why we don’t see them being utilised everywhere…. and Myoporum acuminatum is one of them. It is a mystery to me why this very fast growing , dense small tree or large shrub is not used more often in our residential streetscape 🤨

Myoporum acuminatum as a street tree

In the image above you can see a large specimen provisioning much needed shade in a Sydney residential street. This species can grow anywhere from 3 metres to 5 metres both high and wide, because of its fast growth rate it is a great choice for an area which requires summer shade.

The leaves are medium to large and are somewhat fleshy like many Myoprum species. They are a luscious bright green and make an excellent privacy screen. Perfect for planting next to unwanted neighbouring views.

The white and purple flowers appear mainly in Summer, however Myoporum acuminatum can spot flower throughout the year, attracting pollenating insects and small birds, the following fruit will attract the larger fruit eating parrots.

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Instagram #INeedABirdbathHere Winner and Entries!

We’ve been simply blown away by the beautiful garden entries we received in our most recent birdbath competition #INeedABirdbathHere. We asked our followers to send us photos of their gardens for the chance to win a Freshly Spun Medium Copper Dish and couldn’t be happier with the result. It’s always inspiring to see wonderful native gardens growing across the country.

The Winner is Suzie Barry who has a beautiful native habitat garden on the Gold Coast, she submitted many wonderful shots including images of the wildlife who would benefit from having a Mallee Birdbath in the garden.

Pale Headed Rosella

It was so hard to pick choose just one winner, there are so many talented gardeners out there creating enticing bird habitat environments. So we have chosen a few of our favourites in the interest of inspiring more gardeners to consider making their gardens wildlife friendly and beautiful.

I was particularly captivated by this plinth, ready to support a beautiful copper birdbath, with its soft grass under plantings. The banksias framed either side of the plinth are certain to bring many birds to a birdbath here for years to come and no doubt the forest background will serve as an important corridor for native birds hopping in and out of the bush and into the gardenscape.

The tree stump in this image looks like its crying out for a birdbath and the Calothamnus qudrifidus Grey in the background would provide great habitat and nectar for small honeyeaters. You also can’t help but notice the cute purple Brachyscome flowering in front of the stump.

Another garden entry, clearly habitat rich and suitable for birds can be seen in the following two photos. The Chrysocephalum ‘Silver Sunburst’ lining the rocky creek attract insects, which in turn attract insectivorous birds, and the flowering Kangaroo Paw and Callistemon in the second photo is great food for honeyeaters. Not to mention the magnificent layout of the plantings and shelter available for all kinds of wildlife. Really, really well done.

This lush, native rainforest garden was a bit of a change of scene from most of entries, we love the natural rocky platforms and fern-rich habitat, which is likely to attract some different species from what you’d usually get in a suburban garden.

The sandstone plinths really give this rainforest garden a lift by bringing in a lighter element and some structure.

There is nothing quite like placing a birdbath underneath a flowering gum tree, this offers shade and protection from the sun and a wonderful food source and perching point for the birds.

And we all know what a sucker I am for grass trees, gravel and rock 😉 I adore this simple garden and the smooth tree stump is a great height for racing a birdbath out of the way of predators.

I love the understorey textural planting in this garden combined with the sculpture, the birds would be very happy here protected under the tree surrounded by native grasses.

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Garden Photo Competition - Win a Medium Dish!

This Winter we’re running a garden photo competition on instagram, your chance to show off your gardening skills to us and win a Medium Spun Copper Dish valued at $545.00!!

Take a photo of the spot in your garden that needs a birdbath and share it to your instagram page with the hashtag #INeedABirdbathHere. Make sure to tag @mallee_design in the description.

We’re looking for beautiful gardens with habitat for native birds. You might like to indicate where you want the birdbath to go with an arrow but that’s not essential.  

We’ll be announcing the winner on the 10th August. The winning entry will be featured on the front page of the Mallee Design website and through our social media channels.

Please note that by entering the competition you give permission for Mallee Design to use your photo entries as marketing material.

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Habitat Gardening

My eye is repeatedly drawn to this delightful photo of a father Tawny Frogmouth and his hatchling. Tawny Frogmouth fathers look after their baby birds until they fledge and require wide branches or large forks in old trees to nest. The photo was taken by Darren Broughton from BIBY TV, a Youtube channel with many insightful videos about bird behaviour and bird-attracting plants.

We live in a unique and beautiful environment here in the Illawarra, nestled between the escarpment and the sea much of Wollongong has easy access to the bush or coast. This means the native wildlife also surrounds us and in many suburbs our residential gardens can provide important habitat for local critters.

You can begin by assessing the existing features and wildlife in your garden, you may already be getting lizards, skinks and birds for example, take a look at where they like to spend time and enhance those features in your garden.

You can attract wildlife by re-creating lost habitat in your own garden. It can be as simple as putting in a birdbath, modifying your existing garden or establishing a new native garden. A native habitat garden will provide food, water, nesting materials, shelter and protection for local native fauna.

When adding plants to your garden consider using the local native species that can be obtained from Council, community or specialist nurseries. Local species grow well and need less water than exotic plants, being suited to the local soils and climate.

Wildlife habitat checklist:

Local native plants, large trees (dead or alive), tree hollows, dense shrub mid story layer including prickly shrubs, layered vegetation types, logs, rocks, barks, drystone or timber retains walls, terracotta piping, compost bins, deep litter or mulch, nest boxes, insect hotels minimise pesticide use, avoid supplementary feeding of wildlife.Manage threats of predators by cats and dogs.

Layers:

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Photo Competition Entries and Winner!

Our photo competition is finished and we’ve been absolutely blown away by all our entries. The submissions represent so many different birds and locations across Australia that we couldn’t resist putting them all in one blog post with the winner! Thank you to everyone who sent photos in to us – they have been the source of much excitement and wonder over the last month and for those who have jumped on the bird photography bandwagon Birdlife has their Australian Photography Competition opening on the 28th May, which is another great opportunity to share beautiful photos of your birds.

The winning shot *drumroll* is of this captivating honeyeater in flight by Robyn Bowman. It’s a Brown Honeyeater taking off from her dish near Gympie, Queensland, with tiny droplets of water exploding around it. The sparkling lights in the garden background and wingbeat of the free flying bird really make this photo something special. We have come back to gaze at it again and again and want to say a big thank you and congratulations Robyn! The Brown Honeyeater is sometimes considered a plain and uninteresting bird, but its quiet, courageous nature shines through here.

We had plenty of other striking and stunning submissions, which are presented below. The first are John Harris’s shots of a White-Headed Pigeon and Striped Marsh Frog using his birdbath in Woombye, QLD. The white of the pigeon stands out like a beacon in front of the lush forest background while the Marsh frog blends almost perfectly with the copper of the dish as it perches on a piece of broken ceramic. Both are great quality images, and it was fantastic to see the range of wildlife coming to visit his dish.

Next are Adele Noble’s female Fairy Wrens, Weebill and a Yellow-faced Honeyeater that love her ground-level dish. The Wrens in the first image seem to be enjoying a group splash, and we often see Fairy Wren females visiting birdbaths together (while the males seem to travel alone and can be very tricky to capture!). It’s nice to see natives growing in her garden, which will encourage more native birds into the area too. The Correa behind the dish is good shelter for the small birds to hide in and there’s a lovely thick carpet of Myoporum establishing to the left hand side.

Brad Decent sent us a photo and video (below) of a what looks like a Swamp Wallaby using a dish on his rural property, something we’ve suspected but never seen happen in a dish before! It’s a stunner, the Wallaby looking up between sips to scan the landscape. We love to see other animals using the birdbaths and camera traps are great for capturing otherwise unseen use waterbowls.

Another photo of a Wallaby came to use from Jo-Anne Pittman in Adelaide Hills, its expression gentle and mesmerising. She also captured a confident Currawong and some Adelaide Rosellas splashing about in her dish that backs onto some beautiful bushland. The Adelaide Rosella are a race of Crimson Rosella, which has several colour variants across its range so it was exciting to see these ones that we’ve never encountered before.

Birdbaths on balconies are often underrated so we were delighted to receive these images from Erica Nathan in Hobart. Her large birdbath, surrounded by pot plants looks lovely in the afternoon light and those Sulphur-crested Cockatoos are not afraid to land on it! Doesn’t the one in flight look like batman?!

Sulphur-crested Cockies are suburban kings that occur in all Australia’s major cities, Kathy Lack on the Gold Coast, QLD, also got some lovely photos of them. She captured some Magpies too (seen below) and has a gorgeous rust-red tree stump that she’s mounted her birdbath on.

From Lesley and Paul Herbet in the lower Blue Mountains we recieved this photo of their Gerygones who visit them often. They hop to and from the Westringia behind the dish in between baths and drinks. It’s another smart placement of a birdbath near the shrubbery of the garden so that birds can flit in between them.

One of the photos we really love is this closeup of a Magpie Lark preening, sent in by Maree Davison in Lake Macquarie. You can even see the fluffy white down it’s pulling out from under the wing as it cleans its feathers after a bath. In her second photo the characteristically inquisitive eye of a Magpie stares up towards the camera (they can recognise different human faces), and in the final shot two wattlebirds perch on the edge of her dish surrounded by natives, the fluffy one (on the left) certainly looks like its been for a swim!

This Magpie-lark in Mark Forth’s photograph is having a paddle. Our dishes are designed so that birds can walk into them from the edge of the dish, which is exactly what his Magpie-Lark is doing.

Hiding behind the spiky leaves of a Xanthorrhoea is a Kookaburra in Michelle McAuslan’s Bondi garden. We love how the dish emerges out of the bracken ferns planted underneath and see that she also gets Magpies and Currawongs visiting as seen in the photos below.

Although not a Mallee Dish, Louise Tucker sent us this photograph of one of our favourite local birds – a Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo. Yellow-tails feed on and are often seen in Banksia trees such as the one behind Lousie’s dish, so it’s not surprising he/she turned up at her birdbath. Small flocks of Yellow-tails often move between flowering trees throughout the day and have beaks that can break into the hard Banksia cones.

Sue Kelly in Federal, NSW, photographed a vibrant party of Rainbow Lorikeets having fun in her copper dish. Up close the little red eyes on these birds almost make them look evil! But they seem to be having a very good time bathing a splashing around. Her final photo is one of a Crested Pigeon taking a deep drink from the water and we love that you can lots of detail of the feathers in her pictures.

And that’s it folks! We hope that you’ll keep sending us photos of what’s visiting your dishes and for those who don’t yet have a Mallee birdbath we’re planning to run another photo competition based on native gardens in the next few months where you’ll have an opportunity to win a dish.

We’ll keep you posted,

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Small Scented Shade Tree: Leptospermum petersonii

I finally found a mature Lemon Scented Tea Tree to photograph which shows off its stunning weeping habit and shapely trunk and branches. Leptospermum petersonii really does make a wonderful small feature shade tree in the garden, the strong thick branches spread the canopy wide making it an excellent climbing tree!

The soft, pendulous branches bear long, slender leaves that start coppery, then turn green.

The small, white dainty flowers attract bees and insect eating birds, the flowers are followed by woody capsules which seed eating birds adore. In fact, this particular Tea Tree was home to a family of magpies who had built their nest near the top.

The leaves have a strong lemon scent when crushed and make a lovely tea when infused. The flowers are nectar rich and prolific which makes it a great bee magnet. They prefer full sun but will grow in part shade and tolerate mild drought and light frosts. Leptospermum petersonii is not too fussy about soil and will cope with free draining soil and temporary inundation to the root zone, they also make a great wind barrier.

Leptospermum petersonii is very fast growing, especially when planted in full sun, this makes it a useful quick screening plant or great fast shade.

The leaves and stems contain essential oils used in candle and soap making and can sometimes help to keep mosquitoes at bay.

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Portfolio: Jamberoo Consults

I have been visiting this rural property on and off for the last 3 years, each time providing the client with onsite sketch designs for different areas of the expansive garden.

Working on this garden has been an absolute pleasure and I look forward to each new stage. The client has a knack for collecting useful creative people whom have all worked on making my scribbles a reality, it is a wonderful way to work if you have the right people around you.

When I first arrived and met the client my initial reaction was ‘you need a landscape masterplan’! However, after much chatting we decided to instead go with multiple site visit and consults and this has worked wonderfully. We tackled the area around the house first, getting rid of slippery muddy grass slopes and putting in steppers and proper pathways.

The stone and decomposed crushed granite steps lead around the side of the house to the outdoor pizza oven and dinning and then up to the workshed area.

The steep bank has been planted with Lomandra, Hardenbergia, Rhagodia, Phormium, Dianella and Themeda.

In the image above you can see the main residence below viewed from the outdoor work shed area.

The next area we worked on was the erosion control down the driveway from the top of the property. Plastic turf pavers were laid to hold the driveway gravel and stop run off.

This is an extension of the driveway to reach the new studio being completed at the top of the block. Corten steel has been used to retain garden beds and mulch and also to help direct overland water flow.

A recycled sleeper crossover marks the beginning of a swale which directs water away from the main driveway.

This diverts the water to the sloped paddock on the other side where it flows into an existing creek line.

The banks of the swale were planted with native reeds and grasses which are beginning to fill out and create a beautiful soft embankment.

I love the mixture of Poa labillardieri, Dichelachne crinita, Juncus usitatus, Ficinia nodosa and Anigozanthos sp. they have grown very quickly from tube stock planted 12 months ago.

The last consult some 6 months ago was to do a sketch design for the studio entrance garden bed. This has a beautiful new drystone retaining wall and will quickly fill out with native ground covers and shrubs.

Opposite the studio is the chook pen which is somewhat off a palace under the gum trees 😉

The photo below is from the top of the property, to the left is the chook pen and top the right is the studio.

The lawn pavers are doing a fabulous job of resigning soil and providing a stable surface for cars, machinery and foot traffic.

An extra large fire pit area is being built at the front of the house, in the image above you can see the cortex steps in place ready for the grand opening of another outdoor hangout space.

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Back from a Bird Language Retreat

The mantra of the weekend, a quote shared by JA Baker: “The hardest thing of all is to see what is really there.”

_____________________________________ By Hannah Preston

Two weeks ago I mentored at a bird language and nature connection retreat hosted by Wangat Lodge and run by environmental educator and naturalist Andrew Turbill. Boy oh boy did I learn a lot about birds!

Wangat lodge is in a beautiful spot nestled amongst eucalypt forest and rainforest on the edge of Barrington Tops National Park, on the brink of the Chichester River. The vibrancy and life of the bush surrounding the lodge was outstanding – birds were absolutely everywhere, nesting and feeding and chattering.

By the river we saw Scarlet Honeyeaters feeding in the bottlebrush overhanging the waterway, and some participants were lucky enough to see platypi.

There were about 50 of us at the retreat, nature enthusiasts, scientific minds, family and ecologically passionate folk. The main activity was sit-spotting, which involved going to the same place in the bush everyday where we observed birds and nature for about an hour. We then came back together as a big group to share our experiences of bird-watching, the calls we heard and the behaviours we saw.

One of the highlights for me was watching a breeding pair of little Brown Thornbills hopping to and from spears of Lomandra grass right in front of me, making their almost insect-like ‘zip zips’ and melodic warbles amongst the grasses. Perhaps establishing territory and/or singing their companion calls.

Another character at the workshop was this King Parrot who liked to sit in on our group discussions up in the Cheese tree Glochidion ferdinandi (sometimes whizzing right past our ears!). He was also the first one to check out the birdbaths we set up around the property, you can see him investigating a mini dish in the video below.

Andrew was a fantastic host with a knack for storytelling. He took us on many in-depth discussions about the history of birds, the meaning of their calls, the interconnectedness they have with our greater ecology and guiding us one afternoon on a bird walk with him (a real highlight).

His generosity and articulation was outstanding and I now find myself noticing things about birds here and there that I was blind to noticing before – the ruckus alarm calls of New Holland Honeyeaters as I visit their territory, the outstanding mimicry of little birds like the yellow-throated scrubwrens as they attend their nest and much more confusing chatter that I’m yet to understand!

One of the amazing things I learnt was that lyrebirds are one of the world’s oldest songbirds, likely surviving the Chicxulub asteroid impact that wiped out all almost all other existing bird species 65 million years ago, bringing the dinosaur era to its knees. Being a ground bird it might have been able to shelter from the global wildfires that ensued and highly sulphurised atmosphere that tree-nesting birds couldn’t handle. eBird has some amazing photos and calls of the species https://ebird.org/species/suplyr1

At the end of the retreat people jumped up to share like-minded events and links to bird resources. I’ve put together a list of some of below for those that are interested.

Bird Language 2021! The retreat is happening again next year 14th-17th October 2021. You can contact Wangat Lodge to express your interest at http://www.wangat.com.au/contact

Andrew Turbill has a website with his bio and happening here: http://www.cel.org.au/andrew-turbill/

Wild by Nature programs with Wildcraft Australia (sometimes also hosted by Wangat lodge), see http://www.wildcraftaustralia.com/

Workshops and nature connection with Wild Search Australia based in Byron Bay https://wildsearchaustralia.com.au/

Happy birdwatching,

Hannah

_____________________________________ By Kath

I booked myself and my family into the Bird Language and Nature Connection Retreat after chatting to Dan Lyons the Wangat Lodge owner over the phone. Dan is a wonderfully passionate human who is building on the community at Wangat. I had wanted to take my kids there earlier in the year and though they were only 2 of the 4 child participants in the workshop they got so much out of it thanks to Andrew’s incredible educator skills.

There was never a dull moment during the 3 days, our time was packed with talks, walks, sit spots and various activities to help us listen and connect with our bush surroundings. We enjoyed many swims in the various spots on the river.

My sit spot was actually on the river bank amongst the mossy logs, rocks and ferns, where I heard Golden Whistlers, Thornbills and Wrens. I walked under a gateway of fern covered branches, past this beautiful Cymbidium suave and along the river with relish every time. I embraced the time to sit and simply listen, and working from 30 minutes to 1 hour of sitting and listening was not an issue for me, it was a luxury I relished😉

I learned a few bird calls I didn’t know however the break through for me came when I could break down the cacophony of birdsong into individual calls, regardless of not being able to ID the sounds. Being able to sift through the sounds of the bush and really listen was a ‘light bulb’ moment and I haven’t been able to turn my ears off since. Waking in the morning after we got back I realised how many bird calls I could hear just simply laying in my bed with the window open.

One of the first activities was drawing the sound of the bird calls you could hear, being a visual person this helped immensely for me. The other thing which helped was just letting go of “trying”, by the third day I was a lot more relaxed and had pretty much given up on even seeing the birds I could hear. So then what happens? I sit more calmly, my gaze is softer and I am not taking notes or scribbling away and I see and hear so many more birds! It is like a nature meditation, sorry if that is a bit too cosmic for some of you 🤣

We also got together in small groups based on our geographic locations and made up a rough seasonal calendar of what we have observed in nature in our areas. What is flowering, bird calls, insects, whales, weather patterns etc. all these things are affecting us and the wildlife all the time, it was great getting it down on paper and I have made a pact with myself to chart these observations month by month in my little tech of the woods. Plus also to do some sit spots in my local bushland 💚