Frogmouth Cottage Photography is named after the Tawny Frogmouths that visit and nest in the trees on our nature strip and our backyard. As well as our trees they like to sit on our fences, TV aerial and once nested on our chimney! I thought it was time they took pride of place on my site. They have visited us every year since 2010. We don’t always take photos, but we do have some memorable moments captured.
These photos have been taken by myself and my husband.
December 2010 – First meeting
We met our Tawny Frogmouths in December 2010. The pair chose our chimney to nest on and we named them Napoleon and Josephine. It was Summer in Australia so the fireplace wasn’t in use, and clearly they weren’t put off by Santa climbing up the side! After a few days there was a terrible storm and we couldn’t figure out why they didn’t move – maybe one of them was hurt. Then we noticed a third, smaller frogmouth and realised they had a chick.
November 2012 – Twins
In 2012 Napoleon and Josephine were a bit more conventional and nested in the tree in front of our house. This time round we were met with two gorgeous little fluff balls – twins! Our son took a photo of them to school for show-and-tell, where his class named them Michael and Jackson.
November 2020 – Learning to fly; some pandemic cheer
It was so lovely to see our Frogmouth family in our backyard during Melbourne’s COVID-19 lockdown 2.0. With so little to do, watching the parents teaching their young ones was a joy. They spent most of their time together on our TV antenna – sitting next to the pretend owl that is supposed to protect our vegetables from minors and pigeons, but does very little.
We also watched the young one on our fence while the parent watched on from back at the antenna base.
It’s almost time for them to come back. I hope we’ll hear their “ooom-ooom-ooom” calls soon.
