I have been watching this Top Knot in the Jacaranda tree next door sitting on her egg for a couple of weeks. Am amazed at the size of the chick, must be only a couple of weeks old and is half the size of the parent bird.
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Your photos gives a real sense of a happy litle family - cute growing chick and very proud parent.
Great photos ... thanks for sharing.
Btw graeme - what location was the photo taken?
Photo was taken in Lismore, North Coast of NSW.
Thanks graeme - great looking bird, Im yet to see one, but they are rare around here (sydney) i believe. Thanks again for sharing the photos.
Well done to get these, they are always so high in the trees.
What lovely photos graeme 1. I've never seen a Topnotch Pigeon here in Tenterfield, just Crested Pigeons and the odd other species. How big are they compared to Crested Pigeons?
I'm at Tenterfield, NSW. (Formerly known as "Hyperbirds".)
They are quite large, larger than a crow in body size but not sure about wingspan. The chick in these photos, which was about 2 weeks old, is considerably larger than a full grown crested pigeon. The chick left the nest yesterday and I suspect that it was around 3 weeks of age at that point.
Interesting to see these birds nesting so early. Breeding season is August to December.
Are there some fruit trees or fig trees nearby Graeme?
Samford Valley Qld.
Certainly appears to be somewhat early, but it has been quite warm here a month or so back, whether that has thrown their clock out I am not sure. I have heard that they seem to nest at odd times anyway. There are a lot of fruit trees in the town around our place and fig trees in particular are plentiful. We are on the edge of a good sized area of bush which is free of people and therefore a haven for bird life.
So wonderful to see this bird up close. We have had flocks here in sunshine coast queensland of over 100 these past few months. Unfortunately they stay high in the trees but amazing to see nevertheless.
Oh wow, that is a large bird, graeme. Remember the heat wave we went through last October? Well, we're getting mild, pleasant days and it does appear to be slowly warming up. The Masked Lapwings and the Australian Magpies are well into their breeding already, 2 months early. They always breed at exactly the same time (the plovers in the last week of August; the Magpies during the first week of September - you can set your clock by it actually) but after last year of their eggs getting fried by the heat, resulting in maybe the odd Masked Lapwing chick being born but died from the heat, well.....they're getting in early this year. They're not mucking around with it either. I've already been swooped by Masked Lapwings, and that was 2 weeks ago.
I have noticed, in my area anyway, that something was not right last year when I saw no baby Masked Lapwings or Australian Magpies. After a while the breeding pairs just quit breeding - their whole behaviour changed. That was around the last week of August to several weeks into September. It was unusually hot for that time of the year. In Tenterfield we were getting really hot weather during those months, then come October really hot weather resulting in 45 degrees Celcius weather. The resident Magpies instead bred in Summer and one baby was born and survived but it didn't hang around for very long, or it died or something. I haven't seen it for months. And this year these two bird species are breeding 2 months earlier than normal.
I'm guessing that last year's weather is the direct result of the birds' breeding times changing, especially if there has been a change in the temperature this year to date. I simply can't explain it otherwise as to why the birds would be breeding months earlier than normal unless they are trying to avoid the stinking hot heat, so their eggs don't fry and the chicks can grow up and survive the oncoming heat as a juvenile adult. Anything like this happening there in Lismore, graeme, with the weather patterns/birds breeding earlier than normal?
I'm at Tenterfield, NSW. (Formerly known as "Hyperbirds".)
We had a breeding pair of Magpies here at the house last year and they raised 2 chicks successfully and I saw them around here until early this year when they left the area I guess. Shortly after they left the nest, the tree that it was in blew down in a wind storm. We have a number of Magpie nests in the area, but fortunately they don't swoop on anyone. They seem very hospitable.
We did also have a pair of Noisy Minors with a chick which I could hear around our house a few months ago, before winter, which I thought was a weird time to be having young. Maybe that was caused by the unusually warmn weather before winter.
graeme, I think things are not going so well with birds breeding. I think climate change/global warming has caught up with the birds. The Masked Lapwings that bred here and were swooping me - there's no eggs and no babies anywhere. I think the Masked Lapwings' time has come to move onto greener pastures and leave this dustbowl of a town. All the adults suddenly left 2 years ago leaving all the juveniles behind, and 4 years before then was when they bred the second to last time. Australian Magpies are really struggling in town. I've only seen one chick to date, in a 1km area, with about 12-18 other Magpies. That number of Magpies together is not normal for here. There's possibly 2 chicks though. Some resident Magpies are gone. Food for the Magpies is scarce. Really scarce. Because it just isn't raining anymore. The last time it rained here was when it snowed. Before then, I can't remember. The rain is just gone.
The birds at your area seem to be doing something similiar. Moving about more, breeding earlier. All these birds are either going to relocate themselves to higher rainfall areas or just go extinct. If they can't find the rain extinction is inevitable. It makes me wonder what's the point in planting seedlings of natives if the rain won't fall. At this rate there'll be no birds left in my area to listen to or look at, except the Indian Mynas and sparrows.
I'm at Tenterfield, NSW. (Formerly known as "Hyperbirds".)