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.

Rain and more rain

It has been raining every day and most of each day for the past five days, and the same on all nights. So I have been out checking on the frogmouths as several broods have been due to fledge this week. The brood below looked ready to leave the nest a few days ago, but they are still there, probably reluctant to fly while it has been raining. There are two chicks, one out of view and they are too big now for the adult birds to cover them during the heavy rainfall. Although they are still only half-grown and quite downy, they seem to have faired OK and are now hopping about on the nest branch and ready to fly off. The adult female is now sitting on the nest branch, having spent the past two months sitting in nearby trees. They seldom roost in the nest tree itself, probably to reduce attraction of predators to the nest. Then they often come in close to the nest to roost as the chicks near fledging.


The pair shown below have been less fortunate. They had two chicks the last time I saw them before the rain, now they have lost them. It might have been the weather that caused this, or a predator, I don't know and there were no signs or corpses below the nest tree to indicate what had happened. Now the birds are sitting on branches tight underneath larger branches. This gives them shelter from the rain which can be seen running off the bark of the branch above the female. The male is above her on a separate branch, his tail cutting into the top right of the photograph. This was this pair's second nesting attempt this year, the first having failed to predators, probably a possum.

Tawny frogmouths fledging

Most of the tawny frogmouths have fledged young now or nearly so. The male below has two chicks which have been out of the nest for about two weeks. Although there are still several other pairs which have failed to breed successfully this year and others which are on second clutches of eggs or broods of young, after losing their first to predators - goshawks or possums?

This male's partner was one of the two females shown below. They were sitting together in the next tree from the male. Both birds have very similar plumage - these birds have diagnostic individual characteristics in their plumage. They have the same redness of their coverts especially. Why would the mother of the chicks allow a second female to approach them, let alone sit right next to herself? The second bird is probably related to her. Possibly a daughter from a previous year?

Peregrine falcons

Last week I was in Victoria helping Victor Hurley band peregrine falcon chicks, as part of a study he has been running for the past twenty years. I am familiar with these birds from doing the same thing in Scotland, but the variety of nests sites in Australia was interesting. There were the conventional and most common inland cliff sites, where the birds lay their eggs on bare ledges in the cliffs.
Then there were nests in tree holes. These were in very old trees. One was about 25m up in a temperate rain forest, just below the canopy, others were in river red gums on the banks of the Murray River. Some, like the one below, were in red gums standing in flooded river beds - swamps with lots of cormorants, ibis and herons nesting in the adjacent trees.

Other nests were in quarries, old and currently in use. Some were in nest boxes deliberately erected for the birds high on the sides of factory buildings.

Then there were sites which I am familiar with in north-east Scotland, sea cliffs.

These birds stooped aggressively at Victor as he abseiled down to the nest for the chicks.

Then again when he went down a second time to return the chicks.

Masked plover

Today I found a recently dead Masked Plover by the roadside, after it had obviously been killed in a collision with a car. These birds are common around Canberra where there are many grassy expanses adjacent to the city streets. It is often chicks which are road casualties. This adult had probably been herding its chicks away from the road when it was killed as I had seen the family party at the same place yesterday.

The adult birds have distinctive yellow wattles on their faces, hence their name. And an alternative name for them is Spur-winged Plover, by which they are equally well named.

The spur is in the equivalent position as our thumb, and could be regarded as a highly adapted thumb-nail/claw. It is firm and rigid and would certainly be a deterrent to predators or competitive birds.