🐾 Maybe the reason I love animals so much, is because the only time they have broken my heart is when theirs has stopped beating.
Showing posts with label groundscraper thrush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label groundscraper thrush. Show all posts

Thursday 3 October 2013

Thank goodness it's Thursday

(Equally thankful for Monday or Friday or Sunday...) 


I am just a bird. Not even a rare one, just a robin on a rock looking up at that big sky. 

And yet, I can fly. 

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This week I have been saying blessings and thank you's to the ordinary everydays. Nothing spectacular, yet everything is amazing. The sun is shining and I have friends in my garden. Watching me. Following me. And allowing me to photograph them.

Life is good.





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Grey-headed Bush Shrike - a new visitor!




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Ground-scraper Thrush



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The Masked Weaver was hard at work and not taking any notice of me! And just look at the acrobatics!

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Tuesday 9 July 2013

Ground-scraper thrush (Psophocichla litsitsirupa)


Well, I'm beside myself! I've just noticed a pair of Ground scraper Thrushes in my garden this morningl! Now this might seem like an ordinary event to you, but I haven't seen them since we moved from our last smallholding almost seven years ago. I am SO hoping that they will be staying!


They were residents there, loving the loose leaf litter that I left in the garden the gardener had strict instructions that leaves were not to be raked away. I also had a 'wild' garden on the one side, with logs, wild grass and loose leaves where they would usually be found.


They become very tame, standing very erect and motionless, watching one working in the garden, ducking down and running a couple of paces from time to time, standing erect once again when they stop.

They are carnivorous and their diet consists of insects and they would also take mince when offered it.

The Ground Scraper Thrush is found from Southern to Northern East Africa. Within South Africa it is absent from the far Western and Southern parts. They normally stay resident within an area, but some evidence of seasonal movement in the Northern Cape and surrounding areas have been recorded, with influxes late in the rainy season. Other sources suggest at least partial disappearance in winter.

They build a cup-shaped nest, sometimes on a branch quite close to the ground, using vegetation, mud and spider-webs and it is lined with feathers or leaves. Three or four eggs are laid and are incubated for 14 to 15 days. They are bluish with lilac and red-brown spots and blotches.

Since I started the new garden here in 2005, I've been keeping a close record of all the birds as they started moving in - some first visiting for a while and then, as my trees grew bigger, moving in an making it their home, much to my delight.
 
So I am utterly pleased that this pair has taken up residence here!



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