Whilst I’m a fairly novice bird watcher, Suki the cat had always a great interest in birds for her own reasons. With the exception of cooked specimens, I tended to ignore feathered animals before I moved to Australia in late 2005 to join Mrs. Schmitz in Sydney. This changed soon after we settled in the suburb of North Bondi where the sheer abundance of colourful and exotic species sparked my interest in avian topics. I started to write down bird inspired observations which I put on this little weekly blog about Australia, Sydney and the feathered and not feathered locals.
The males of this species spend most of the year building, maintaining, improving and decorating the bower you can see in the picture in an attempt to outrival their peers, a phenomenon that is commonly referred to as “keeping up with the Joneses” in the human world. In Australia the philosophy of “keeping up with the Joneses” is widespread and often equated with the catchphrase of the “great Australian dream”.
This very small Old World passerine is a species of sunbird found in coastal northern Queensland, a region Mrs. Schmitz and myself visited recently for the purpose of escaping the cold of the Sydney winter.
This unfortunate seabird is not only endangered, in addition it has the dubious honour to share its name with Tony Abbott the annoying leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. Mr. Abbott is an outstanding specimen in the already strange species that is the Australian politician.
