Easy Street Retreat is situated on the banks of the Bellinger River in the Thora Valley near Bellingen in NSW Australia .

photography - tawny frogmouth

Tawny Frogmouths (Podargus strigoides) are a chubby looking bird, with big yellow/orange eyes. Our tawnys are a pair who live in the trees surrounding our house. We haven't seen any evidence of a nest or chicks yet but are hoping they might have chicks this year.

They're very hard to see, even when they are pointed out to you. During the day they sit upright, completely still on branches in trees, with their heads tilted up and eyes closed to slits. Their plumage is finely streaked and mottled in grey and brown, and in this posture they look just like broken branches.

Sometimes we find them on the ground during the day adopting their 'I'm a stick' pose. You can walk right up to them and they'll still maintain that pose. This makes them easy prey for cast, dogs and foxes. Fortunately, our aged dog Muffy, whose eyesight isn't what it used to be, is blissfully unaware of their existence.

If disturbed they sometimes try to look intimidating by fluffing out their feathers and showing their big orange eyes and opening their beak in a wide frog like gape to reveal a yellow throat. Our tawnys don't bother doing this any more. We think they are quite used to our comings and goings and know that we don't pose a threat to them. We know they are watching us though, because they open their eyes slightly and swivel their heads around slowly to track our movements.

You might not see tawny frogmouths during the day, but you could hear them at night. They have a low, humming 'ooom-ooom-ooom' call, which sounds like this (MP3 - 300KB).

At night they eat insects like moths, which they catch in flight. They also sit on branches and scan for movement, ready to drop to the ground to catch worms, slugs and snails. Occasionally they eat mice and frogs. They are sometimes killed by cars because they can see their prey in the car headlights.