Backyard nature news

The family noticed yesterday some new birds visiting the backyard, and after a perusal of the bird book, it would appear it was a family of apostlebirds.  They look like this:

Not exactly colourful, but their behaviour was interesting:  hoping around the ground in a group of 5 or 6.

And I see from Wikipedia that they indeed seem to be a very co-operative species:

The apostlebird was named after the Biblical apostles, the twelve followers of Jesus Christ.^[5][6] In fact, the species travel in family groups of between 6 and 20, which may coalesce with other family groups into large feeding flocks of over 40. ...

Apostlebirds are a socially living, cooperative breeding species with each breeding group generally containing only one breeding pair, the rest being either their helper offspring, kin or unrelated adult birds. Most group members help construct a mud nest, share in incubation of the eggs, and defense of the nest. Once the eggs are hatched, all members of the group help feed the chicks and keep the nest clean.

Positively socialist!

I take it from one other site, where someone posted a photo of them from Brisbane in 2013, that they are not so common here.  (They generally come from a bit further inland, it seems.)

We seem to be privileged to be seeing them.  Hope they hang around.