Happy New Year (or a noisy one, at least!)

On New Year's Eve, my stepdaughter and her husband called in, so there were extra people in the Pardalotes' nesting zone (i.e. our family room).  The parents were still very busy bringing in food, and the babies had begun to add an insistent, high-pitched peeping to their squeaking noises.

Despite the people chatting in the room, the parents kept up their food relay; and the next day we added even more people to the room - including grandchildren. The Pardalotes were undeterred, and the babies were fed pretty much from dawn to dusk.

This video is very grainy (sorry), but you can hear the noise the babies make as the parent backs out. It seems to have a little packet of excreta in its beak to take outside.

We are lucky that the Pardalotes are such good housekeepers, taking their babies' droppings right outside. We have swallows' nests underneath our eaves outside, and the paving below their nests is a real mess with all their droppings.