When we bought this house in early 2008, we joked that it came with a ‘dead’ eco-system. The only spiders were redbacks, the only birds common farm varieties, the sparrow and the starling. Both pests and in plague proportions.
We’ve been slowly and steadily building things up, hoping that we could address the imbalance without resorting to chemicals to kill the ‘bad’ spiders. We planted a garden, we reseeded the lawn, we had horses for 6 months and we’ve got poultry – at a steadily increasing number.
All these things have worked to decrease the ‘bad’ bugs and spiders and restore a balance to the system. We haven’t seen a redback spider in a while, the huntsman spiders are increasing in number and we’ve got a few black house spiders hunting in various corners outside.
The bugs appear to be a good mix of everything and the ducks and ducklings spend most of their time darting through the grass catching everything that flies. The chooks scratch out the beetles and grubs and my paddock has never looked so lush, with the grass desperately needing whippersnipping – it’s waist high in places.
It took twelve months for the small garden to look any good – that was 12 months with the soil covered entirely in hay to promote moisture and growth. We’ve had good results with everything I’ve grown in there since.
Obviously some parts of the paddock need work, my big garden in particular. I’m slowly building that up with potting mix, sheep poo and left over horse poo. Next time I see the farm manager I’ll corner him and ask for some more spoiled hay for the garden, if they’ve got any.
One of the best things about having planted flowering shrubs and getting the whole cycle of things sorted out is that the native birds are coming back
I saw a honey eater the other day and the welcome swallows are hanging around.
Welcome swallows have to be one of my favourite birds. They are cheeky and let me get rather close with the camera. Not to mention flying around my head in circles when I’m out in the paddock, making me wonder if I’d accidentally fallen into a cartoon and hit my head.
This current pair is looking for a new place to nest – they had attempted nesting in the old water tank, but all their nests have fallen off and broken. I’m not sure if it’s the mud they’re using, or the metal of the tank. Something isn’t working for them in any case.
In amongst all the partially built and broken nests, I found an entire one. They had made it to the lining stage, before it fell off. No eggs lost though.
It looks like they’re favouring my barbeque area as a nesting site, or that general area. Needless to say they’ve been flying in and around my kitchen windows, darting in and flying around Nathan’s head before flying out and assessing the situation.
It’s been great to watch and I can’t help but be pleased that they are back. Not to mention, this isn’t the only pair. I counted 4 different pairs taking a bath in our puddle last week.
Lovely.
You made me realise how obliviously uneducated I am about simple t issues of ecosystems. sounds idyllic … even with spiders (redback or not!).
Most of what I know is common sense, it’s about trying to get a balance between things you do want and things you don’t – because the things you don’t want are there merely to feed the things you do want. It’s why I’ve got frogs living in the lettuce, because they’re eating the slugs for me.
I keep on forgetting to tell you to get in touch with the understorey network. They grow plants especially for situations like yours and they gather seed from local areas. Love the swallow photos 🙂
I’m having so much fun getting photos of the swallows.
What incredible pictures! Sounds like the land is healing and coming back to life. Wonderful.
Slowly slowly. It’s a very slow process, remembering that we’ve been living here for almost 3 years now. It can only get better though.
Oooh yay for balanced ecosystems! I wish I knew enough about that sort of stuff!
It’s happening, slowly!
I was fascinated to observe that no birds whatsoever would land on the Angels Trumpet tree in our backyard, they all avoided it. Now the tree is gone we are seeing the birds more as they visit the other trees in the area. I’m really hoping to get a native tree to plant where the Angels Trumpet was.
I googled Angels Trumpet after you posted about it – wow. They’re so beautiful, but I wouldn’t want one anywhere near my place, thankyouverymuch. I’m glad yours is gone now. I like natives – I’d like to get some banksia and some more wattles planted here.
It was so beautiful and I was sad to see it go. But I’m not sad to get rid of the worry about one of my girls getting sick from it.
I’m thinking one of those red bottle brush trees would be pretty. We have a gorgeous wattle across the road from us.
I would have loved to photograph it, but like you, I would have panicked about the kids. I love bottle brush trees. They’re great and the birds love them.
Jeez, I just Googled it too and have realised that the neighbours’ overhanging tree that the kids pick flowers from is a Brugmansia. My eldest kid tells me there’s one at her school, too. Not happy about those facts.
I thought it was just a pretty tree when we moved in, assume many people like me don’t realise how poisonous they are. I’m grateful for our friends who do know plants who told us what type of tree it was.
I know, I know, it was all hard work but you make it sound so easy. And idyllic.
Well done, you’ve done a great job there.
It’s more slow than hard and frustrating, definitely. It’s a bit easier now that we’ve got frogs in the garden (thanks Mum for the tadpoles last season) and the ducks to keep things in control.
What a fantastic result from all your hard work 🙂
It’s great to finally see it paying off. We need more trees and more natives + fruit trees, but we’re getting there.
Great photos, Veronica!
It all sounds beautiful to me, and what a lot of hard work you’ve been rewarded for!
Thankyou!
It hasn’t been hard, so much as slow work. It will be great to see how the new garden (veg) is looking in March once the tomatoes and everything else have grown (and attracted possums, no doubt).
Love Peter and Paul sitting on the fence there. It sounds like your property will be thriving as it should be soon.
Hopefully! I want more trees in and then I’ll be happier.
What gorgeous little birds! And what is a wattle? We’ve been planting native shrubs here as well, but ours have names like bayberry, inkberry, chokeberry, bearberry, winterberry, beach plum. Most are berries for the birds. Your yard sounds like a fine place to work/live/play for animals and for people.
This is a wattle.
Beautiful, thanks!
Gorgeous birds & photos of them.
It is good to see the fruits of your labour.
It is good to see something coming from it! I should have found the photos from 3 years ago when we moved in.
Wow, I loved this post. As always my green eyed monster hat is sitting on my head in a virtual way obviously as by nature I don’t really do envy. However you are so lucky to have the land as you know its something I would just adore.
Its only when all the different names of species – come up that I remember we are so far apart in distance. The rest of the time I feel you know more about me than people I have lived near for twenty years. The virtual world is as you know these days my social life.
I love the photo’s. Its winter here and as you know us EDSers hibernate. It appears that I am nocturnal again something I must address.
It keeps me going through the dark winter months to read of the natural world in your part of our earth. Thank you.
I will have to keep posting photos, just for you.
It’s lovely when people who know what to do with the land are the ones who get some. I pretend to know stuff, but I really don’t know much more than water it, don’t drown it, ladybugs eat aphids. Which always annoyed me because I had millions of aphids and only a couple of ladybugs.
I was beginning to wonder what welcome swallows looked like and thinking I’d have to google them, then your photos started showing. They’re so lovely!
We don’t have that much land, so I can understand how they let it go a bit – the obsession with bikes and cars they had also, probably didn’t help.
I’m your newest reader, and you posted welcome swallows on my first day. It’s fate.
It’s definitely a good sign!
Just beautiful.
The photos are stunning
Thankyou!
What beautiful photographs. And the account of your successes! I felt like I was reading through some sort of nature magazine. Living outside of a city makes images like this so hard to imagine.
Oh I’m about as far from a nature magazine as you can get!
Nice looking birds. We occasionally get Rainbow Lorikeets up where my family is in FNQ on an occasional basis, tends to be around spring or summer 😀
I would love to get the chance to photograph Lorikeets. Beautiful birds.
Wow, you have talent lady!
Thanks! It helps that I had really REALLY cooperative birds to work with. They’re so cheeky and interested.
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