Bird Banding in Cape York, Australia

Although many people elsewhere in the world have been in some form of lock-down or another due to Covid, I have been busy in the field most of the past year as Canberra has been relatively free of the nasty bug - so far. In consequence, I am only now catching up on cataloging last year's photographs. This set is from a bird-banding trip to Kutini-Payamu (Iron Range) National Park in Cape York, north Queensland, that was organised by Jon Coleman, back in late November - early December. This was all done as part of a long-term study by various people over the years of the birds in rainforest in the area, so it was good to be able to fulfill this year's effort and maintain the continuity of the study. The first survey in this study was done in 1990, and a total of 5988 birds have been banded, including 712 birds in 2020. And 54 birds were re-trapped in 2020 from earlier capture in previous years. 618 birds have been re-trapped in the whole study. I do not aim to detail all the species banded/ringed in this post, merely portray a selection of species that we caught, some of which are only found in that part of Australia.

Frill-necked Monarch Arses lorealis, a flycatcher which in Australia is restricted to the wet forests in Cape York. Like many of the species caught in this study, this species' range is between far north-east Australia and New Guinea.

This is an adult male, females have pale lores and do not have a black chin.

White-faced Robin Tegellasia leucops. One of the more commonly seen rainforest birds in the study area. Mostly because they hunt in typical robin style of perching on low branches then pouncing on prey on the ground. It might be commonly seen, but only locally, as in Australia it is restricted to the Cape York peninsula.

White-faced Robin. Yes it has white face.

White-streaked Honeyeater Trichodere cockerelli. A true Cape York bird as it endemic to the area. We watched these birds feeding on nectar from flowers in the high canopy of the forest.

White-streaked Honeyeater. As with so many birds, the details that can be discerned when in the hand give a different impression of the bird seen in the canopy. Here the elaborate spiky white feathers on the throat show how the streaked effect is formed. And those subtle yellow tufts are exquisite. 

Tawny-breasted Honeyeater Xanthotis flaviventer. This is another trans Cape York - New Guinea species, although it isn't restricted to rainforest as it can be found in other wooded habitats. The wavy white line below the eye is a diagnostic feature on this otherwise generally brown coloured bird.

Grey Whistler Pachycephala simplex. This is another species whose range extends over northern Australia and New Guinea. Small green-grey birds are easily overlooked in a forest.

Magnificent Riflebird Ptiloris magnificus, adult female. There are three species of Riflebird (members of the BIrds of Paradise family) in Australia, all separate in their ranges and this is the most northern one, which ranges between Cape York and New Guinea.

Chestnut-breasted Cuckoo Cacomantis castaneiventris. A cuckoo of dense rainforest, hence in Australia mostly confined to the Cape York peninsula, close to its main range throughout New Guinea.

Little Bronze-Cuckoo Chalcites minutillus. This of the minutillus sub-species as recognised by the wide black and white markings on the outer tail feathers. This sub-species ranges across northern Australia, the archipelago of Indonesia and New Guinea, and south east Asia.

Little Bronze-Cuckoo. The tail pattern is diagnostic between the various species of Bronze-Cuckoos. The metallic lustre on the bird's back and coverts show why they are named Bronze-Cuckoos. 

Lovely Fairy-wren Malurus amabilis. Adult male on the left, female on the right. These birds inhabit the edges of the forest, sticking to the scrub along the edges of clearings. They are known hosts of the Chestnut-breasted Cuckoo, above.

Yellow-breasted Boatbill Machaerirhynchus flaviventer, adult male. 

Yellow-breasted Boatbill, adult female. 

Yellow-breasted Boatbill - this shows why they are named boatbill. This is a flycatcher and I have watched them catch insects in the air, but I do not know the advantage of the unusual bill shape.

Noisy Pitta Pitta versicolor. This is a common species of rainforest or wet forest gullies all along the eastern fringe of Australia, but that does not detract anything from the privilege to see them up close. They are predominantly green, yellow, brown and black so easily missed when foraging on the forest floor. Although the lustrous blue on their wings and rump shine must shine when they flash them.

Shining Flycatcher Myiagra alecto, adult female. 

Shining Flycatcher, adult male. 

Shining Flycatcher, adult male. The blue plumage shines in the dappled light of the forest, especially that on the crown and throat.

Shining Flycatcher, adult male. The bright orange of the inside of the bird's bill is so vibrant in contrast to the shining blue of its plumage that it must be an important component of their display.

I find the colours and forms of all birds fascinating, when considering their purpose, and in the dark understorey of rainforest, little details help the birds shine and be seen by their con-specifics. 

I always see something new when I visit rainforests, and on this trip I saw rather a lot. My thanks to Jon for organising the trip.

Butcherbirds

Adult male Pied Butcherbird - there is a reason for the glove, see below

Last weekend I was on a bird-banding trip to the Weddin Mountains, run by Richard Allen. There were seven of us altogether to set up and maintain vigilance over the numerous mist nets we had placed throughout a patch of wooded, partially-cleared pastureland adjacent to the nature reserve. Most of the birds in the area seemed to be local breeders, which was reflected by the catch of adult birds of a wide variety of species, but no high numbers of any one species other than White-plumed Honeyeater, which were abundant and breeding. One pair had a nest in the tree branches above the banding station. And we also found nests Spotted Pardalote, Speckled Warbler, White-winged Chough and Pied Currawong. 

The glossy black hood and wide white collar indicate that this is an adult male bird,
some of the bird's black feathers have faded to brown under almost
 a year of sunlight since it probably moulted and grew that set  

Butcherbirds are never abundant in any area as the pairs guard their territories well, excluding all others. So it was doubly opportunistic for us to catch two species, Pied Butcherbird Cracticus nigrogularis and Grey Butcherbird Cracticus torquatus. And as they were breeding, we had a chance to compare and note features of the two species' full adult plumage. The Pied Butcherbird illustrated here is an adult male, the distinguishing features for an adult being: the blue-grey bill with a black tip, juvenile and  immature birds have grey/brown bills through to dull blue, each with a dark grey tip; his hood is black rather than brown/grey of an immature bird. Adult females have less white on the outer wing coverts, less glossy black in the hood and grey on the back. 

Butcherbirds have a well defined hook on their bill tip

The Grey Butcherbird is very like the Pied and could perhaps be most quickly described as a similar bird, but of of duller plumage. As its name describes, it is grey overall. The adult male has a black hood, but white throat unlike the Pied's black bib. As with the Pieds, these adults also have blue bills with black tips, while the young birds have grey-brown ones with darker tips. The bird illustrated here is an adult female as she has a grey-brown hood and a distinct patch of off-white feathers in the lores, complete between the eye and bill; the male has a distinct white spot on the lores which does not extend to the eye.  

Adult female Grey Butcherbird

Great care should be taken when handling butcherbirds of any species as they can bite...

The hook on the tip of a butcherbird's bill is well adapted for gripping

Woodswallows

Adult male white-browed woodswallow

I was helping to catch and band birds on a field study run by Richard Allen last weekend at the Weddin Mountains. The weather on Sunday was a bit windy for efficient mist-netting but we caught 108 birds, mostly on the Saturday.

The main birds of the trip were woodswallows. There was a flock of about 700 flying overhead most of Saturday, and they were coming down to feed on nectar from flowering Ironbark trees, then they came in to roost in the trees at dusk. The main species was white-browed, of which we caught 40, and there were also masked (2 caught) and dusky (1 caught).

A dusky woodswallow on the left and

a white-browed woodswallow on the right

Among the other birds we caught were a male and female sacred kingfisher,

Male sacred kingfisher

and a one of those wonderful kingfishers, a kookaburra.

Kookaburra

Bird Banding at the Weddin Mountains

Last weekend I was out catching birds at the Weddin mtns on a trip run by Harvey Perkins and Richard Allen. The bush was looking very green and lush, greatly changed from the dry and shrinking habitat I last saw there a year ago.

We caught 173 birds of a good variety of species, even though most of the summer migrants had left. We saw a flock of about sixty bee-eaters fly overhead, going north so that might have been them gone too. The birds we caught were of the resident or locally migratory species and there were many juvenile and first year birds indicating that there had been a good breeding season.

 An adult female Crested Shrike-tit, she has a green bib and collar, while the male has a black one - we caught her mate (but he was released before I could photograph him) and he was banded seven years ago at the same site.

A Varied Sittella, wonderful little birds which forage up and down tree bark in extended family cooperative groups. This bird is a full-grown male, the female has a white chin and lower face.

 

Two Spotted Pardalotes: an adult female on the left a male on the right. he is moulting the first four white spots on his crown, from the yellow spots he had while in juvenile plumage, similar to that of the female. His full adult plumage will have all-white spots on the crown and a brighter white stripe above the eye.          

A juvenile Painted Button-quail, fully feathered but only half adult size. These birds have been abundant throughout the grassy woodlands in our area this year and seem to have bred well.

Bird banding in Mallee

Last weekend I was out banding birds in mallee woodland at Charcoal Tank Nature Reserve, near West Wyalong. The trip was organised by Mark Clayton who has been banding birds there for over twenty years and seen big changes in bird numbers there as the habitat has changed over the dry years and now a wet one. One bird we caught was a fine adult male Common Bronzewing, above. This is a common and widespread Australian species of pigeon, readily identified by the male's pale forehead and rich rusty red underwing.  

We caught three Painted Button-Quail which have bred well in the tall grasses that have grown throughout the east in the high rainfall of the 2010-2011 spring. This bird is the more brightly coloured female with chestnut neck, back and coverts. The male which incubates and rears the chicks is smaller and more buff in colour.

The grasses are about a metre tall, and have cast their seeds, but still provide a thick understory to the red ironbark trees. In previous years the ground has been open, with a thin covering of leaf litter and sparse grasses and shrubs.

We also caught a mallee heath specialist species, the Shy Heathwren. This is closely related to the Chestnut-rumped Heathwren, which it clearly resembles. That species is however, more associated with coastal heaths and scrub farther east. The Shy Heathwren fills this habitat niche from near West Wyalong and to the west.

The bird we caught was an adult female, identified by the pale eyestripe and dull wing flash of white and dark feathers. The male has more a pronounced white eyestripe and wing flashes.

While we were catching birds in nets, we ourselves were repeatedly caught in the large anchor strands of cobwebs spun by orb-weaving spiders. Here a female sit in the centre of her web while the smaller male sits quietly on the edge. She is quite likely to eat him after they have mated.

Banding birds at Moruya

Last weekend I was helping Anthony Overs catch and band birds in the escarpment forest at Moruya. Michael and Sarah Guppy are working on a long-term project studying the local birds' breeding behaviour, so several banders went down to catch as many as possible and band them with individual combinations of colour bands. Michael, Sarah and Anthony have been doing this for several years and by marking the birds this way they can determine which bird is paired with which, where they nest and how many chicks they rear. The Yellow-faced Honeyeater above is the most abundant honeyeater in the forest, and there were many birds with flying young.

The adult male Scarlet Honeyeater below, the only one we saw, was probably passing through the area with flocks of other birds post breeding. There were also many adult and juvenile New Holland Honeyeaters.

The adult male Spotted Pardalote below, is another common bird in the forests. They are unusual in foraging in the canopy, perhaps a hundred feet up, but nest in self-dug burrows in a broken bank of exposed soil.

We caught several larger birds too, including Noisy Friarbirds, a Satin Bowerbird, a Crimson Rosella, a King Parrot and the adult Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike below.

The last bird we caught on the Saturday evening was an adult female White-headed Pigeon which was lured down to seed.

Bird banding at Moruya

Last weekend several of us from Canberra went down to Moruya to catch and band birds in a patch of forest. This was to individually mark birds with colour bands so that Michael and Sarah Guppy can follow the breeding biology and habitat use by a range of passerines. The bird above is a Red-browed Finch.

Micheal and Sarah have been studying these birds for several years, and it is all done on their own land so access is easy and the whole project is very well organised. We quickly set up a base station in the forest and started catching birds.

One of the more abundant and studied species is the Superb Fairy-wren, a male is shown here being delicately measured.

Another study species is the Brown Thornbill - the bird shown here clearly shows how readily the birds can be individually identified by the unique combination of colour rings which each bird is given.

We caught 146 birds altogether of numerous species, and we had two Olive-backed Orioles in one net. The sexes are very similar, but can be distinguished. The male, here on the left, has slightly more green about his throat as can be seen in these photos.

This spectacular bird with a bald head and splendid Elizabethan ruff is a Noisy Friarbird. They mostly forage high in the canopy so it was unusual to catch one. Although these features are readily seen in the field, when in the hand they can be studied more closely. Why do they have a bald head? They are members of the honeyeater family, so this could perhaps help keep their plumage clean of sticky nectar? And look how they have retained eyebrows - a sensible adaptation to keep the rain out of their eyes? What is the purpose of that horn on top of the bill? And when did you last see a birds ears so clearly? Great birds.