Did you know that in addition to our incredible garden teams, St Bart’s has a Creation Care Mission Group who help us to be good stewards of the beautiful land that God has entrusted to us. Members from the group have now completed three years of bird surveys, with 28 species identified in 2023. Five of the identified species are pictured. Sincere thanks to all who are involved, if you would like to know more about the Creation Care Mission Group, please contact our office.
John Stott often said (and wrote) that we can learn much from birds. Turns out he had a pretty high authority on the matter... Jesus said: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" — Matthew 6:26
1: Satin Bowerbird (adult male). Satin Bowerbird is mainly a summer-autumn user of the forest next to St Bart’s church buildings. A male routinely constructs a bower/playground in the prayer garden for courting purposes, and several green females or curious youngsters frequent the trees and grounds nearby. The bower is destroyed from time to time, presumably by rival males. We have not yet discovered a nest, which normally is halfway up in a tree.
2: Masked Lapwing (‘plover’). Lapwings, also known as plovers, seem to be residents at St Bart’s and, remarkably, sometimes nest on the church roof! Mostly, they nest on the ground in the open and their patterned eggs blend in with the background. They make plenty of noise if a person or a predator approach a nest or young too closely.
3: Spotted Pardalote. The tiny pardalote, smaller than a sparrow, has an exceptionally beautiful pattern of spots in its plumage. The Creation Care Mission Group’s observer team recorded it on 7 occasions in the forest next to the church from 2020 to the present. The Spotted Pardalote was high in the canopy of tall forest eucalypts and was sometimes chased by larger, aggressive Noisy Miners.
4: Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo. The Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo is a semi-regular visitor to the Toowoomba escarpment and city, often as a trio of father, mother and nearly independent child. Two flew into the St Bart’s forest on 14 January 2023 for a brief stopover. One of the favourite foods of this bird is nuts extracted from green pine cones.
5: Australian King Parrot. It is not unusual to see several King Parrots winging through the forest and it seems likely that some nest in tree hollows in the older eucalypt trees. When perched they often emit a far-carrying, high-pitched whistle.
