Thursday, February 26, 2009

Little Turdus gets some 'grub'




It took this young blackbird 25 minutes to get this huge curl grub down, and keep it down. (Dont worry, you only have to see it go down once, but we do have Part II tommorrow.) I think a more experienced bird would have let this monster go.

Blackbirds are introduced to Australia. I HATE their incessant rearranging of the bark mulch in the garden, but I LOVE their song. If you pass by my home, you may see me sweeping the bark from the pathways and back into the gardens, stopping occasionally to shake my fist at a blackbird and mutter various names at it.

Common Blackbird (Turdus merula) at Wiki.

8 comments:

Melanie said...

What a little guts this bird is! Kind reminds me of myself when I binge on my "non diet" days.
Great close ups of him and I know he is introduced but he is kind of pretty. I love the colour textures on his chest.

Young Werther said...

Whoa! Was that grub eaten (swallowed) alive?

Ces Adorio said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ces Adorio said...

Oops, sorry had to delete the first comment due to typographical error. The third image with the grub being swallowed is great. That is one big grubba grub!

BetteJo said...

Okay I hate to state the obvious but your blackbird isn't black! Where were they introduced from?

My Budgies of the fictional town of Budgewoi said...

eek, cough, cough, ahem - that was some grub!
a brown blackbird, hehheh, ahh the irony.
great close-ups yeah.
Bud.

Barkfoot said...

I know exactly what you mean about throwing the bark chippings about... always onto the lawn too.
I love the young ones, you can just make out the speckles that reveal them to be part of the Thrush family.

sandy said...

hahaha, great photos of him eating...

hehe...the visual is funny.