Tawny frogmouth in Underwood

Several years ago a pair had nested in a coral tree over a playground in Lawler Park opposite Underwood Bushland. Both parents build the nest. 

As Gisela Kaplin writes in her marvellous book ‘Tawny Frogmouth’:

The prospective parents bring sticks and leaves and place them on the fork of a tree without any effort at weaving.  They construct the shape  just by walking over the sticks. Such construction can take up to four weeks before the female can lay her eggs.

That nesting effort in Lawler Park produced three wonderful little chicks.

In the 1840s, John Gould wrote ‘That the male participates in the duty of incubation I ascertained by having shot a bird on the nest, which on dissection proved to be a male’.

It is hard to imagine shooting a bird sitting on eggs, even if it was about 160 years ago.

These days, when we  clear bushland, we destroy the habitat of living creatures. And let them die under the blade of a bulldozer or through starvation.

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This text was originally posted on Urban Bushland Council WA's blog.