I get great delight from my birdbath in the back yard, watching the blackbirds on a hot day enjoying their bath.
I also leave small metal dishes around for the neighbour cats to drink from, the birds use them too.
My biggest delight is in the summer on a really hot day, to have the well hose going on the berm, which creates puddles either on the footpath, or in the gutter, and see the birds cooling off.

So far the summer there have been too many times that the automatic sprinklers have been turned on in the sky!

Our neighbours elderly cat took to coming over to drink from the front fish pond in the middle of the night, inspite of a dish of water nearby.
This particular night, 3am, the husband was up using the smallest room in the house. He heard ET crying, and the next thing was in the room with him. Phil reached out his hand to give ET a stroke, and very quickly shot the light on. There stood one very wet dripping cat - he must have fallen in!
Out came the towels and hair dryer.............
And I have never seen ET over here again!

Well, I know what has been stealing my tomatoes - I came around the house unexpectedly and there was a male satin bower bird (glossy black with a purple-blue sheen) - and there was also another tomato missing and one with pecks in it too. These birds are VERY destructive of our fruit but I haven't had one this close to the house before.
I went out early to water the plants around there in the morning and what was my surprise to smell that a fox had been there over-night. NOW I know what my dog was barking at for so long last night. Foxes are an introduced pest in Australia - and we have quite a lot of them. Most of the time they stay well out of sight during the day.
Then in the afternoon I heard the yellow-tailed black cockatoos again - they've been away for a few months. They love our pine trees! By late afternoon they had feasted on pine cones. Ever seen a kid who has eaten a packet of unshelled peanuts and just dropped the shells all around - well that's what it looks like under a pine tree where a coackatoo has been eating - A REAL MESS! (btw these cockatoos are at least 600mm long - black with a yellow patch over the eye and yellow under the tail feathers.)

So, Mikk, are you going to protect your plants or allow the lovely bird to feast? I think it's a privilege to be robbed by such a beautiful and clever bird. But it might end up as fox lunch, by the sound of it.

The plants can stay unproptected and the birds can feast - if not with my 'pleasure' at least with my consent - I don't have time to net everything. A few years back we netted everything and consequently got much more fruit than now - peaches, blueberries, plums. Back then there were 4 sets of strong and healthy hands to do everything - now only one set - and its still five acres!!! However, the fig trees are loaded right now - plenty for the birds and us - so let them enjoy themselves. Also yesterday I noticed my lychee is loaded with fruit - and nearly ripe - yummy!!! Lychees have a hard almost woody exterior and the birds don't bother them. Last year I used to stand by the tree and as fast as I could skin the fruit my dog wanted his share. Fresh lychees are delicious!

Lychees are wonderful! There's an indefinable something about the flavour that is magic. But when I heard that you have fig trees, I coveted them! I adore fresh figs! We get so few here, and they can be $7 - $15 a kilo, so they're a luxury. The last lot I bought had grubs in them, and I was so disappointed. Mangoes, custard apples, and monsterios are probably up there with the best. Oh, and banana passionfruit. MMM. I'm making myself hungry! lol

I wonder if anyone here has eaten what we called "Chiney Apples" as children? They are a tropical fruit which grows on a thorny tree, who's proper name is a Jou Jou tree, I believe, and is native to India. They were once prolific around North Queensland, but destroyed because they grew like weeds. They were really delicious. You could eat them when they were tart and firm, or when they had grown soft and mushy. Delicious either way.

Mikk, that must be the most spoiled dog in the world, feasting on lychees!! lol

What kinds of figs grow there? Rooting fig cuttings is not too difficult. If you'de like I could out line it. Let me know.

Ed, I really don't know the breed of figs that are my favourites. As far as planting them - I'm in rented premises, and i wouldn't like to see the landlord's face if I planted a fig tree in his already-crowded back yard! However, now I know where to ask if it becomes a possibility in the future, so thank you.

Just when I thought I had seen all the different birds and bird activity in my back yard I found something new!
I have quite a few satin bower birds that seem to spend most of their time stealing my fruit. However the other day I noticed down under one of the native shrubs there was an unusual shaped bunch of twigs/branches. I am not fond of crawling around under bushes so just left it. Later as I was sitting at my window I noticed a bird there hopping around in an unusual way. It flew off before I could look at it properly, but then I saw the same thing happening a few days later. This time I had time to get my binoculars and have a good look. I couldn’t identify the bird so got the bird book and did some close reading of the descriptions. I found that though the male satin bower bird is glossy blue/black all over, and the female is a gray color on top with white and gray barred underneath – (this I already knew!) – BUT – the juvenile male is an olive green and does not mature for 4 years. This was the bird I saw – and obviously the bunch of twigs/branches was a bower. The book also said that juvenile males use the bower made by an adult male. It was interesting to see this bird hopping and dancing around the bower all to the accompaniment of a series of different chortles and chirps. (How does one adequately describe bird sounds?*!)
How little I really know of even the common things around me! How wonderful that in heaven there will always be something new to learn!
Also, just thought that I would tell you that our drought finally broke! We have had very heavy rain – 7 inches of rain, then 6 inches the next day, and then today just when it looked like the rain had cleared away for a while we had an enormous storm sweep through and got 2 inches of rain in 20 minutes!!!! We are NOT in the tropics here and are not used to this amount of rain all at once. Oh well, there will certainly be a few drains to clear out tomorrow!

We are having the same kind of down pours here in NZ, only we have had no drought this year, just lots of rain.

Thanks for sharing your bird discovery with us.

My bird discovery this week was 3 baby cockatiels in the nesting box.They have their feathers on, so they have kept pretty quiet whem I have gone in. There is no mistaking the noise of hungry birds.

The hungry birds are also in my garden inspecting the grapevine every day.Barely showing colour, they are determined to have the 1st sample.

I bought some bird netting, but before i could put it up, the ties on the vine snapped, so we had to get it back up 1st.
Cable ties are excellent to put round the railing of the fence and through the netting to hold it in place.

Well, here it is the middle of February and the plants and birds think its spring already. Im hearing the morning and evening songs of robins daily now. I was over to my dads on Monday and ribbed him for having left his hummingbird feeder out with food in it all winter long. Well I couldnt have been more shocked when 3 hummers came zipping by for a drink. Dad just looked at me and said, "thats why the feeder is out".LOL Silly me. I cant imagine where those little ones are finding enough warmth, its still very cold here. Then just yesterday I saw several kinglets adorning my roses looking for aphids. Ive even had sparrows poking about the bird houses. I guess its time to stop looking at the calender and telling the plants and birds they are off schedule; now the plants and birds are telling the calender it needs adjusting.

Amelia