Bird Visitors

We love the Birds in Backyards site, it helps us to identify the birds that visit out bird baths, eat our bugs and pollinate our plants. Here are a few of the birds that have visited us this weekend.

Birds in our Garden Today

We get many, many birds in our small suburban garden, they use our bird baths, these are just some that visited today.

More Bird Visitors

Every day we have such a wide rabge of birds, we do not even know what some of them are! However, I have been visiting the Birds in Backyards site to get help with identifying the birds that visit us. Only a few more left to find...

Update on Vertical Garden

 Watching a You Tube clip has made us realise that we could be using vertical space in the garden much better. So when the last clump of Bok Choy was harvested today we topped up that section of the bed, then built a frame using salvaged materials. Once made we planted some Basella Malabar Spinach Green. a climbing spinach which has been recommended to us.

 

And here is our new vertical space. 

A few of the Spinach seeds have popped up and so has this Rockmelon vine, they will both be able to use this frame. What we had not expected is the number of small birds who perch on the wire, before darting like flying acrobats through the garden catch bugs.

So we decided to help them out a little bit more and placed an unused stand and saucer nearby for them to drink from, it is a pleasure to watch them.

Lettuce, Lizards and Ladybirds

The no dig garden out the front continues to bloom with more and more plants that we have grown from seed planted straight into the soil. We currently have three different types of lettuces and Italian Parsley growing next to each other. The mulch is the new sugar cane mulch we have just put on to retain moisture as we have a very dry climate.

This shows the other plants, Lettuces, Tomatoes, Spinach, Kale, Rocket, and Beetroot. In the background the Pineapple Fejoa hedge still has a way to go, and the Fig tree finally has new leaves on it.

One of the reasons for starting to grow our own food was to reduce the damage that we do on the environment by producing organically grown food locally. Outside your own front door is about as local as you can get! What we had not expected, but are thrilled about,  is the continual  build up of wildlife, bringing the garden to life on a whole new level. The Butterfly is heading for the Spinach, which has now gone to seed, we are hoping to start saving our own seeds this season.

We are sure that this Lizard, and the many, many frogs we have in the garden are the main reason our crops survive so well.

Other welcome guests were a whole group of ladybirds/beetles who appeared last week to clear the Kale and Spinach of unwanted bugs. They were a little camera shy but very fast workers.

And finally, the number of birds has increased dramatically, here is a 28 Parrot, one of about 12 types of birds that visits our suburban yard each day. They include Honey -eaters, Doves, Willy Wagtails and Honey eaters to name a few. It is great to see so many other creatures enjoying the garden as much as we do.