Pardalote Pleasure

A few weeks ago I had organised for an excavator to come and clear the sludge from our dam whilst it is dry. While he was here we decided to get him to pull down the old collapsing retaining wall alongside the house. I ws so relieved he was able tdo this as demolishing it ourselves would have been quite dangerous. I was out there the week before last, looking at the wall and thinking about how the job would turn out, when noticed a pardalote fly in to feed its young right where the wall had to come down. I felt awful!

Their nest was in the bank just around the left corner in this photo, about 20cm below the earth surface. We have another pardolote nest in a cut behind the house, about a metre from where we eat, chat, bbq, and mere centimetres from the hammock. I worried for days about what to do, there was no way the excavator would be able to avoid crushing the nest completely, som the day before the job (last tuesday) I decided to at least attempt to move them. I read up as much as I could on their nesting habits and I doubted very much that they had the slightest chance.

I started by using a flat shovel to gently scrape away the grass and then the layers of dirt above where they were nesting. I didn't know how deep their nest would be from the surface or into the bank so I excavated an area about 70 cm back from the bank and gradually worked down about 8 cm before I saw the top of a grassy dome appear. I was really worried the noise and vibrations would kill them with shock so I decided at this point to give them a break. I went and dug a ledge out of the steep bank behind the house, about 15 metres from their nest. Rather further than I thought was ideal but the only safe place I could offer them. The phone rang then and it was my mother, I started telling her about the pardalotes and was looking at my excavations from the verandah when I noticed the parents panicking and unable to get into the nest to feed the young. The nest must have caved in. I thought they were surely crushed to death but decided to try and dig them out and move them as quickly as possible. I grabbed a plastic mesh tray, about 30 cm round, and using a hand trowel dug around the nest as quickly and gently as I could. i put some of the excavated soil into the tray and when i had dug deep enough got my fingers around the next and lifted it into the tray, I opened the top slightly with my fingers to check for live young.

There were four of them, all well grown and well feathered.,about two-thirds the size of an adult, but they were covered in dirt, had been partially suffocated. I quickly carried the tray to the dugout and placed it in before packing around th nest with as much dirt as I could pack safely, without fear of it collapsing in on them. I then ran to the house and grabbed a strong cardboard box which a tore a panel from for a roof. I weighed this down either end with heavy rocks, then tore another panel off the box for a front wall, stabbing ahole in the front for an entrance. I weighed this down with smaller rocks before covering the entire structure in dried clods of grass that Mum and I had recently taken out to make room for my vegie garden. I packed as many rocks and clods of earth as possible around the structure to make it as strong and draught free as possible.

Meanwhile the parental pardalotes were extremely distressed to find their nest had disappeared. They were repeatedly flying back to the spot with food-laden beaks. It was heartbreaking, I waved my arms around a bit and told them where to go but there wasn't much more I could do. I felt like a murderess.

When I saw the parents flying into the new nest, I just couldn't believe it! I watched amazed as they re-established their feeding routine with incredible regularity. Each time a parent flew into the nest the yound made a racket, I could easily hear the parents coming and going without having to look. I got worried this would attract snakes so at dusk I packed more grass and stones around to try and muffle and insulate them as best I could. Later I added a branch to help shade them from the sun.

Today it is six days since I moved them, and this morning, to my absolute delight, I saw two fledglings practicing their flight and trying to eat clothes pegs off the line (eating insects hiding in them possibly). I wondered if this meant the other two chicks hadn't survived but listening closely I could hear calls, the bigger more active chicks were still hanging around the nest and getting fed when the parents came back but then I noticed the parents going behind the nest. Two chicks were nestled in a temporary looking grass bed above the nest and the parents have spent all day bringing them food.

The first two fledglings seems to have been gone a while now. I have watched the second two being fed up and then leaving, one by one but interestingly, I can still hear a chick in the nest and the parents are now feeding it! I wonder were there five in the nest all along and it was under the dirt and all the others? Unless one found the big wide world far too scary and went back in for a while....I suppose there must have been five!

Update:

This morning the last chick called loudly for what seemed hours and I was worried that its parents had forgotten it, but eventually a parent came a few times and fed it, then a flock of pardalotes, some immature, arrived and they next thing the last chick was gone. I can only assume the whole family had come back to lure the straggler out into the real world. We had a heavy storm last night so it was great to think that it seems like the whole family survived it and are out there today feasting on all the post-rain insects.