Brolga Healing Journeys

Cockatoos -  large, colourful and often raucous birds, are found in their various guises across Australia. 

The beautiful Galah, the smallest of our Cockatoos, is found across the land.  It is such a common sight that its beauty is often taken for granted.  There is something quintessentially Australian about watching a flock of Galahs waddle around the grasslands searching for seed.   They provide quite a spectacle when they take to the wing, the sun lighting up the rich pink of their under-feathers.

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The Wrens, and the Fairy Wrens in particular, are among the most beautiful of all small Australian birds.  The male Fairy Wren is every bit the equal of its Robin counterpart in terms of its brilliant breeding plumage.

Perhaps the most stunning is the Splendid Fairy Wren, with its almost irridescant, electric blue breeding colours radiating out from the bushland.  The other species aren’t far behind, with the Superb Fairy Wren of the eastern seaboard, the Variegated and Red-Winged Fairy Wrens, and the Red Backed and White-Winged varieties, all providing a shock of colour to the scrublands they inhabit.  The females, with their brown and cream colouring, tend not to attract the eye as much as the males of their species, but nevertheless are very pretty little birds.

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Australia is home to many delightful species of  Robin.  We have all heard of the ‘Robin Red-Breast’, but our Robins are in fact many and varied.  Yellow, red breasted and capped, white, scarlet, buff-sided and rose are but some of the colours and types to be found in different regions of Australia.  As with most bird species, it is the male who is the most striking and colourful.  The females are relatively drab little creatures but still pretty in their own way.

It is always exciting to see a flash of colour from a small passing bird, then realise it is a beautiful little Robin.  Robins tend to live in forests or open woodlands, their diet consisting of insects, and they are often seen perched sideways on a treetrunk as they watch and wait for insects in the leaf litter below, dropping on their unsuspecting prey. 

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The many Parrot species found around Australia represent some of the most beautiful birds in the land.  In addition to their visual splendour, many also have a pure bell-like call.  Some, it should be added, have a raucous squawk instead.

We were often fortunate in Canberra to see King Parrots, Crimson Rosellas and Eastern Rosellas flying from tree to tree, wild and beautiful.  We were vaguely aware that there were other Parrot species to be found across Australia, but knew them only from books or cages.  One of the great pleasures of our travels has been to discover new species (at least for us) in the wild.

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