Morning Tea with the Birds

We had our first frost of this winter today, with the temperature falling to -1:

It is surprisingly late for the first frost.

After breakfast we drove to Geelong. We made a few purchases at the Friends of the Botanic Gardens winter plant sale, then had morning tea at the kiosk in the gardens.

There are signs around the kiosk asking people not to feed the birds, but the kiosk staff are not very fast at clearing tables, so this happens:

Probably a Little Raven, Corvus mellori, but who can tell the various species of raven apart? There wasn't much in the way of food left on that table, but the raven spent some time shredding paper serviettes before it was joined by a red wattlebird, Anthochaera carunculata:

The wattlebird didn't find much of interest at that table, so came over to ours to see if we had anything good:

It got very close to my food while I was messing round trying to take photos.

The raven hit the jackpot on an adjacent table:

A couple of left-over scones with jam and cream.

It was slurping up cream when we left:

If the gardens really want people not to feed the birds, perhaps they need to ask people to bring their plates back inside when they have finished, or the staff need to be much quicker about clearing the tables.