Week 42, 2025

18 Oct 2025

I imagine (I wouldn't know, being the eldest) this is what it's like to be a younger sibling. The younger Sea Eagle chick never complains much that the older one is always sitting on top of it or standing on the little one's wings or bonking it on the head with its own wings. They don't fight nearly as much as I'd expected.

We went to Healesville Sanctuary this week for my birthday (it's not for a few weeks but we wanted to take the chance when the weather was good, since we'd been waiting for a nice day). It was extremely good. I couldn't recommend it more.

We started with the bird show, Spirits of the Sky, where I fell in love with Bernice, the Black-breasted Buzzard who can open emu eggs using rocks (she opens a 3D-printed replica egg during the show). There were no eagles in the show but Bernice really hit the spot anyway. I loved her so much we went back to see the show all over again in the afternoon!

They also had an Osprey, a Barking Owl, and a bunch of different parrots: Eclectic Parrot, some cockatoos, and a Corella. They fly really close to you and show off a few tricks, and you get to learn about the various breeds and the specific birds they have at Healesville.

In-between our two visits to the bird show we saw... more birds! We had a very cool up-close encounter with the resident Tawny Frogmouth family and their two new babies! It was really cool to see them up close and chat to their keeper about their personalities and how the breeding program works.

We also saw lots of other cool, non-bird animals, like playpuses, Tassie Devils (including some babies!), wombats, echidnas, koalas, and kangaroos and wallabies. And some other cool birds: emus, a lyrebird, lots of different parrots, a pair of Bush Stone Curlews incubating their eggs, pelicans, a kookaburra, and lots of other water birds, too.

In the nests this week, the ospreys at Port Lincoln gave up on incubating their eggs, which have now been retrieved and sent away for analysis. Hopefully we'll be able to find out what made them decide all 3 eggs weren't viable, but either way it's a sad early end to their season this year.

The sea eagle chicks continue to grow, and seem impatient to get out of the nest and explore. They still have some weeks to go before fledging, though.