I and the bird #93
It has been too long since my last contribution to the I and the Bird carnival.
At long last I managed to scrape in a link to the latest carnival over at Vickie Henderson Art. Her compilation of wonderful posts about birds from all over the world is called The Compelling Nature of Birds.
Go on – go on over there and have a read.
I’ll wait patiently here for you to return.
White-fronted Honeyeater
Juvenile White-fronted Honeyeater
I apologise for the poor quality of the above photo. I only had a few seconds to take it before the bird flew away, not to return. If it does, and I get a better shot, I’ll replace it.
This morning was very hot. It reached 45C (113F) just before lunch time, with a strong, hot northerly wind blowing up dust everywhere. Not a pleasant day by any measure.
New Home Block species
Despite the atrocious conditions I was able to add a new bird species to my home block list, a juvenile White-fronted Honeyeater. I had previously seen this species less than a kilometre away on several occasions, so it seemed inevitable that I’d record it here someday. Today was that day. It brings my home list to 110 species; adding new species doesn’t happen often these days.
Distribution of White-fronted Honeyeaters
This species is widespread throughout inland Australia west of the Great Dividing Range. It is absent throughout the northern parts of Western Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland as well as the south-western tip of western Australia, southern Victoria and Tasmania. Here in Murray Bridge is near the southern-most part of South Australia it can be found. It can occur in the Coorong area and once I saw one bird near Lucindale in the south east of the state.
Habitat and breeding
The White-fronted Honeyeater prefers dry inland scrubs, mallee and eucalypt woodlands. It usually breeds in the latter half of the year but will also respond to rain and breed at other times. The one I saw was an independent juvenile. It probably fledged sometime in the last two months.
Normally they lay 2-3 eggs in a cup shaped nest comprised of bark, grass, or spider’s web and is usually located low in a bush or even on the ground.
Reference:
Pizzey, G and Knight, F, 1997, The field guide to the birds of Australia, Sydney, Angus and Robertson.
White-winged Choughs, Botanic Gardens, Canberra
White-winged Choughs, Botanic Gardens, Canberra
The White-winged Choughs I saw in the Australian National Botanic Gardens earlier this year are obviously used to large numbers of people visiting the gardens. They seemed quite at ease with me taking photographs of them from a few metres away. They were more intent on finding something to eat.
White-winged Choughs, Botanic Gardens, Canberra
Choughs spend much of their day on the ground, scratching in the dirt or removing any mulch put there by gardeners. One of them found a buried cone from a tree and there was suddenly a great kerfuffle and they all came running to have a taste of this delicacy.
I didn’t distrub them to have a closer look at the cone, but in the photo it seems to be something like a Hakea seed cone. It could also have been a Banksia seed cone.
Banksia flower, Botanic Gardens, Canberra
The River Murray is collapsing
Warning: This post has nothing to do with birds or birding. Since first posting this article one of my regular readers left a comment that spurred me on to add the last few paragraphs.
Many people acknowledge that the River Murray and the Lower Lakes are in desperate trouble. Levels are at the lowest in many decades, the flow is almost non existent and we have little idea of where the much needed water to keep it alive is coming from.
This desperate situation has been brought about by severe drought in the catchment area over the last three (or more) years plus decades of overuse and over allocation to irrigators upstream. The states upstream have almost totally ignored the needs of South Australia.
Something happened yesterday on the river bank right here in my home town of Murray Bridge that is symptomatic of this disaster happening in front of our eyes.
An 80 metre stretch of the river bank suddenly collapsed into the river, taking at least three cars with it. You can read about it and see a photo here. I can’t go down there and take my own photos because the area is now a restricted zone.
The bank collapse was at a local marina. The photo below was taken a few months ago at Swanport Reserve, about a kilometre south of the marina.
Without good, widespread above average rainfall right across the Murray-Darling basin over the next 2 years, plus well above rainfall in the Adelaide Hills this coming winter-spring, I fear Adelaide will run out of water sooner rather than later, possibly next summer. It is that serious from a human viewpoint. Economically many orchardists and dairy farmers are already going to the wall and many more are well on the way.
Beyond that, however, the long term environmental issues are potentially catastrophic – it may have already reached the point of no return. We may well be seeing the early death throes of the river and lower lakes. The implications for the bird life of the whole river system are frightening; they are threatened too.
Low river level at Swanport Reserve, Murray Bridge
What is this bird?
Mystery bird, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra
What is this bird?
During my visit to the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra early this year I saw the bird shown in the photograph above.
Even though it is a reasonable photo, I am at a loss to determine the species. It was not happy with me being there taking a series of photos. I heard several others but they failed to show themselves. The photo was taken in the fern gully near the entrance to the gardens. Below I’ve included several more photos of the habitat.
At first I thought they were White-browed Scrubwrens, but the call was wrong and there is no prominent white eye-brow.
The closest I can come to identification is Large-billed Scrubwren, but that species is not listed on the bird list for the gardens. Birds Australia atlas site is no help either.
Can any one help me? Leave your suggestions in the comments, or use the contact form.
UPDATE: I put out a request on the Birding-Aus and Canberra Birds newsgroups yesterday asking for help with identification of this bird. I had about 15 people reply and all but one said it was a juvenile White-browed Scrubwren. The mystery has been solved. Thanks everyone. I’ve published some pertinent responses in the comments below.
Fern gully, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra
Ferns in the Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra