Guess who’s back?

I’ve been keeping this one under my hat for a bit. For those of you new to Backyard Zoology, this post won’t mean anything particularly special to you, aside from it featuring lovely Tawny Frogmouths of course. But I know that there are loads of you who followed the story of the Two Tonys over on Facebook who would be bloody excited for a new update. And I’m happy to report, it’s quite a lovely one 🙂

Firstly, a brief run down for those of you new to the story, but a warning, you may need the tissues. We have lived in our little cottage surrounded by trees for about 12, 13 years now. Since we moved in, we’ve had Brushtail Possums in the garage and Tawny Frogmouths in our yard, on the fence or in the trees around us. It’s pretty idyllic in a teeny, tiny kind of way. Over the last few years, we got pretty attached to a bird we named ‘Tony’ (get it?). He’d be regularly in the tree just outside our kitchen, overlooking our clothes line and so, he became just part of our day. He’d sleep most of the day away, except for when the dogs were running around at my feet, at which point he’d look down giving his best yellow ‘death stare’, pupils black and wide, before turning his head, closing his eyes and nodding off again.

Tony meets his match

His lovely rhythmic ‘oom oom oom’ during the night was always much loved and we’d check in with each other and one of our neighbours as to whether or not he was heard during the night before. Perfect. And then one day, just on dusk, I heard another bird ooming away across the road. And Tony heard it too, his eyes flinging open wide. Let me tell you, he became VERY awake and very animated! I watched as he flew out of our tree and headed straight for the calling female.

It took a while, and honestly I wasn’t even sure it would happen, but one day after following the carry on of a very vocal Grey Butcherbird, I noticed Tony and Toni sitting in a tree and ON A NEST!!! They can be hard to see with their incredible camouflage, even when they’re not imitating a branch, so I was pretty damn excited to have found them across the road but especially as Tony’s love story had a super lovely ending. Except it didn’t.

When good news turns bad

Around day 30, our daily nest check revealed one very fluffy, snow white chick. The hatchling occasionally popped out from under the safety of dad, eyes closed, its head wobbly as it briefly stretched and stood and then plopped back down again, ready to be absorbed back into dad’s feathers. And then I got a text from a neighbour saying that the nest was empty. Everyone completely gone. Swallowed up by the night. We ran outside to try and work out what was happening. A mistake surely. Except this was no mistake. The nest was empty and the surrounded area deathly quiet. We got our cameras out to see if we could find any sign of the family.

Unfortunately for Matt, he found the baby, on the road, a few metres away from the nest. I ran to pick it up, hoping against hope that it had somehow survived but it’s body was limp and cold. Dead. We stood and cried, holding the body. And cried some more as we dug a small grave under the tree and placed the downy body in the ground. And worse still, we soon found the remains of one of the Tonys under a low branch, feathers up and over the branch itself, his beak in the curl of a leaf underneath, seemingly snatched from the nest by a bird of prey. I cried for days and days and couldn’t walk to the car without the tears starting to flow all over again. And from our yard, the sad daylight ooming of the remaining partner, over and over again. And then they were gone.

Ready for the good news?

Okay, apologies for bringing the mood down. Right down. But we’ve finally had some good, Tawny based, news. During February the nighttime ooming returned with a Tawny hunting for insets and worms and moths and delicious things really close by. Jump to March and I happened to look up in one of the trees, a shift of movement catching my eye. Tony! or Toni! or a brand new Tony, at this point we didn’t even really care.

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I find Tawnies really hard to tell apart. There are obvious differences but hey, I’m not that kind of gal. All I know is that I have two healthy, living Tawnies (sometimes one, sometimes none. They seem to choose their roosting spot based on weather and where to get the best place to sun themselves). Also, how could you not love these two weirdos sleeping with their heads rolled over to the side?

So I had to share the good news of the return of the Tawny Frogmouths to our yard. Here’s hoping for lots more snippets of lovely news to share from them in the future.