More than a sparrow in a teacup

The Towerwater garden has become home to a range of birds. It is visited by ever more species. Different birds seem to have claimed certain parts of the garden as their territory.

The sparrow in the teacup

The Olive thrush pair has claimed the rosarium as theirs. One can see them moving up and down the rosarium. Pecking away and scratching at fallen leaves, they search for tasty earthworms and odd insects and hopefully, some unwanted slugs.

Olive thrush

The Cape robin-chat pair has claimed the herbaceous border at the bottom of the lawn as theirs. One can see them hopping around in the shadows looking for invertebrates to eat. I am a bit concerned that their diet includes small frogs and lizards. These are very welcome in our garden. I have to trust that nature will take care of the natural balance.

Cape robin-chat

The Cape bulbuls have claimed the orchard as theirs. They are the first to be heard in the morning where a bedroom window overlooks the orchard. Their diet includes fruit and that explains their choice of location in the garden. I should be concerned about this. Although they destroy some fruit, it is not enough to ban them from the garden. Their acrobatic insect catching in mid-flight is quite something to see.

Cape bulbul

The Cape white-eyes roam the garden in their little flock. Rushing up and down the rosarium like a group of naughty children, eating insects from the roses. They also enjoy fruit and figs. Choice fruit can disappear overnight if one does not pick them early in the morning before they discover them.

Cape bulbul

The resident Cape wagtails roam the lawns and stone stoeps. Here they feast on insects while occasionally cleaning the decorative mouldings around the doors and windows. Last year, they built their nest in an outside room from where the bottled gas supplies the kitchen. We tried to use the room as little as possible so as not to disturb them. But after a cat discovered them, they abandoned the nest. The cat’s claw scratch-marks in the green paint of the slatted-wooden door provided the evidence of what had happened. 

Double-collared sunbird

The Southern Double-Collared sunbirds are favouring the hibiscus flowers at the moment. But they have quite a selection of flowers to choose from for nectar in competition with the bees.

Double-collared sunbird on the hibiscus

The pair of laughing doves tend to spend their time in the fiddlewood tree. They appear to find food under the oak trees where they nervously walk about.

Laughing dove

We have three neighbourhood cats that come to the garden to hunt the birds. We love cats but prefer to create a safe haven for birds. They provide a life of song and activity that’s beneficial to the garden. After the death of our cat, Sugar, at the age of 16 many years ago, we never got a cat again.  Sugar was a mouser and not a birder.

Twice over the holiday season I walked out in the morning to find feathers on the lawn. A clear sign that a bird had been caught by a cat. The feathers were those of laughing doves. It must be due to their slower get-away that they always seem to fall prey to neighbouring predatory cats.

Cape robin-chat

It makes me sad that I cannot stop the cats from catching the birds in the Towerwater garden. But for the cats it must seem like a delicatessen.

Cape weaver cleaning the hibiscus of its leaves

The Cape weaver started building a nest in one of the oaks. This, after breaking off the leaves of nearly half of the branches, leaving the oak tree looking like half of it was still in winter. When that nest was rejected by the female, he abandoned the oak tree and started clearing the hibiscus of leaves. That nest was also rejected and is now hanging in the herbaceous border looking very sad in the half-cleaned hibiscus. It should be obvious why the weaver is not a welcome visitor to the Towerwater garden.

The Bokmakierie shrike that made his home in the orchard a year ago did not return, but I still hear his call in the area.

I hear the pair of Turtle doves clumsily moving around in the wild fig tree. Cooing away in the thick branches, they find shelter against the summer heat.

Some mornings, I find the rock pigeons sitting on the roof of the main house looking out of place, pretending the roof is a temporary rock ledge.

Double-collared sunbird

The sweet song of the Cape canary adds to the orchestra of bird sounds in the garden. But they seem to visit the garden instead of taking up residence. I appreciate their vocal visits. Sometimes one cannot help but keep quiet and marvel at the beautiful sounds these feathered friends introduce to the garden.

Some surprise visits over the holiday season included the Red-faced mouse-birds. They are not particularly welcome in the garden because they can really destroy fruit. Their little red masks make them look like thieves or bandits to me.

A pair of Hoopoes popped in for a brief visit. We also had a few sightings of a pair of African Paradise flycatchers as they roamed the garden for a few days.

Cape robin-chat

The three Hadedas seem to be a lot more relaxed. Earlier when I found them on the lawn, they would fly away filling the air with their loud shrieks. But lately, they just walk up the steps from the lawn to the rosarium to find some juicy earthworms in the well composted soil, not so much as giving me a second look.

They live across the road on the canal side of the garden in tall blue-gum trees. There they share the trees with a flock of Guinea fowl that comes to roost. I don’t think they actually sleep. They sound like a lot of creaky bedsprings until the early hours of the morning.

Snake stuck on a wire by the Fiscal shrike

Grasshopper stuck on a wire by the Fiscal shrike

The Fiscal shrike comes to the garden sometimes but has given up residency since the Cape bulbuls moved-in. I still find his macabre display of spiked birds, snakes and insects on the razor wire fences along the road.

Swallows

In summer, the path in the rosarium becomes a danger-zone when the Barn swallows start protecting their nest under the bridge over the canal on the northern border of the garden.

The Double-collared sunbird investigating the teacup deli

The Cape sparrows that made their messy nest in the oak tree enjoyed the teacup bird-feeder that I hanged in the tree. They could not believe their eyes when they discovered the new food source. They were there so often that the sunbird came to investigate what was going on. When the seeds in the cup were finished, I filled it with water to benefit more birds than just the sparrow-in-the-teacup, on our hot summer days.

The male Cape sparrow

The big oak on the lawn becomes a gathering point for all the birds before they fly off to their nests or branches for the night. Where we are eating or relaxing under the tree, it is as if our residential birds come and bid us goodnight and thank me for scaring the cat away.