White-browed Crake

Again it is Wednesday and today I show you another Australian bird.  This week it is the turn of the White-browed Crake - Amaurornis cinerea.  Just to put you in the picture, I was staying at my daughters and I got the know the man who owned a commercial fish farm 10 minutes from her home and he asked me to come onto his property and record the birds that were present. During my stay in Australia, I probably went nearly every week so over time you will see more birds that I found there.  At the end of the photos I have a short video.

Below is  a part of Barra Farm and very close to where I photographed the White - browed Crake.

The size of this bird is between 18–20 cm

I am going to show you the photos in the order that I took them and at the beginning this bird was quite a distance away from me and walked in and out of the vegetation.

Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical mangrove forests.   They are found on wetlands with waterlilies or other floating plants – billabongs, swamps, flood waters – also surrounding forest or woodland. Unlike other secretive Crakes of dense reed beds, the White-browed forages across lily pads and other floating vegetation, helped by its very long toes. It occasionally flutters low across intervening water.  

At the time of the year that I was in Queensland, it was hot and I   usually was out from 6.30am and by 8.30am the sun was so hot that I had to pack it in as where I was walking had no shade whatsoever.

 

Breeding

September.–April. Builds in dense reeds or grass in the shallows of a swamp or lake. The small, shallow bowl often has vegetation pulled over to form a rather sparse hood or canopy, and a ramp slopes down to the water.

 

The White - browed Crake usually has 4–8 oval eggs (28 x 20 mm).

Incubation is undertaken by both the male and female birds for about 21 days.

 

When the newly hatched chicks are born, their down is black and  becomes rusty tan when they are half-grown.

 As I told you, I was up and out just after sunrise and these birds are

most active after sunrise, near sunset and beneath overcast skies. 

Calls include a chattering ‘kiak-kiak-kiak’, ‘chika-chika’, a frog-croaked ‘kak’, and a soft ‘charr-ar, charr-ar’ in danger and if you listen carefully on the video, you will hear the sound that it is making. 

These last 2 photographs below were taken at a difference place and you can see the White -browed Crake walking on Water Lily leaves.

You can access the video at

http://youtu.be/NCNKPWpzkvE

 If there is a black space below, click it and the video will appear.

 

I hope you are enjoyed a very different bird this week from Australia.

Thank you for visiting.

I am linking this post with Wild Bird Wednesday.

Mount Stewart Gardens

The gardens at Mount Stewart extends to 98 acres and are located on the shores of Strangford Lough, County Down, created by Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry in the 1920s and 30s.  They are famed around the world for their grandeur and the bold planting schemes of many rare and tender plants. The gardens' colourful botanical treasures capture the imagination and excite the senses. They are a living, breathing masterpiece and utterly unique, due to Lady Londonderry’s vision and the unusual micro climate of the site - she introduced a stunning array of original plants, creating a wonderful collection of North American, Asiatic and southern hemisphere plants, many of them rarely seen growing outdoors in the British Isles.

After the house's interior, (see yesterday's post), the Marchioness redesigned the gardens in the most lavish way possible. Prior to her husband's succession to the Marquessate in 1915 the gardens had been plain lawns with large decorative pots. She added the Shamrock Garden, the Sunken Garden, increased the size of the lake, added a Spanish Garden with a small hut, the Italian Garden, the Dodo Terrace, Menagerie, the Fountain Pool and laid out walks in the Lily Wood and rest of the estate. In 1957, she gave the gardens to the National Trust.

To this day,visitors to Mount Stewart are touched by her vision and the unique and vast collections of plants from North Vietnam, South Korea and Taiwan.  Edith's idea of garden sculpture was unique, quirky and fun.  Where else would you find dinosaurs, cheetahs, orang-utans, squirrels and dodos resting among the unique plants?  This distinctive statutory and hard-landscaping are an essential element of the gardens, framing views, providing backdrops and support for plants and a firm surface to walk on.

I suggest you grab a cup of something, put the pictures onto a slide show and sit back and enjoy this walk with me around the wonderful garden, finishing off with a short video from the garden that Lady Mari designed.

 

 

 I  know this was a long post, however as I had walked through these gates that have gold leaf on them having seen the garden and loved it, I did not want you to miss anything (for this season anyway), so I hope you enjoyed the gardens.

If the National Trust wished me to do another post sometime, I would be happy to oblige and link it into their site.

The video can be accessed at

http://youtu.be/o6xWzWhx4Ls

If there is a black space below, click it and the video will appear.

Now I hope you enjoyed  the walk and are not exhausted from it.

Many  thanks for visiting. Have a great day/evening.