Noisy Friarbird nesting

In January this year I posted on my main blog about my discovery of a Noisy Friarbird nest.  I didn't find that nest until the chicks were well advanced.  When a Noisy Friarbird turned up behaving strangely on our deck ...

... in late November I wondered if it was gathering nesting material.  HANZAB notes that the nest is "... often bound with spider web ..." which is clearly visible in the first image.  As HANZAB notes a high level of site fidelity (although IMHO within 2-300 metres shows a fairly flexible interpretation of 'site') I started looking for a nest in the vicinity of last years.  I didn't find it immediately although I noticed the birds spending a fair amount of time in a tree about 10m away.  (That is what I mean by site fidelity!)

Eventually - after possibly 2 hours of searching over about 3 weeks I was able to get into the correct position to spot the nest (again guided by the movement of the adult birds.  I estimate it to be about 5m off the ground in a well-foliaged Eucalyptus meliodora (Yellow Box).  (As an aside this tree has also been used this and earlier years as the site of a Pied Currawong nest and for 3 earlier years as the site of a Tawny Frogmouth nest.)  In the next image the nest site is circled in red.

Here is a close up, The visible part of the nest is, like last year, made of woven strip of eucalypt bark.

I have also posted about the nesting of larger honeyeaters in the context of Eastern Koel parasitism. While there are few Koels around here, it will be interesting to record the timing of this event for comparison with previous events in other sites, which are summarised in that post.

On 29 December I heard the sound of chicks for the first time.

That was just about the last time also!  Because of the leaves fringing the nest from above it wasn't possible to see what was going on in the nest unlike last year.  About 5 January Frances saw a small fluffy Friarbird in the garden so I thought they had fledged by then.  However on 10 January an adult flew to the nest and esconsed itself, so I think there are still young there.