One morning I received a phone call from a friend who told me they had a nest of Little Friar Birds down the back of their place in a tree at the end of a shed.
They had only just found it the day before and the babies were quite large.
I had some spare time that day so I asked if it would be all right to come out later that morning. Both he and his wife would be at work and the children at school but I could just come out anyway. He added that he had a ladder behind the shed if I needed it.
The nest wasn’t difficult to find but no matter where I looked at it from the ground, even though the nest was on an outer branch, leaves and branches from other trees were always in the way. The ladder was certainly a great asset.
By leaning the ladder up against a nearby tree, when I climbed up, I had a clear view of the nest from the top.
One positive about the situation was that the parent birds showed no concern whatsoever about my being up there in fairly close proximity to them. This gave me a number of chances to photograph them when the parent came through the leaves from the inside of the tree to continue their feeding.
Although they are part of the Honeyeater family, the Friar Birds brought back a wealth of small insects to feed their young ones. .
Although I had planned to go back again but having other commitments at the time, I didn’t get a chance to go immediately.
The babies left the nest a few days after I had been there so I didn’t get the second chance.
