Striated Pardalotes

                                                                             Striated Pardalote Pardalotus ornatus

Over the weekend I was out helping Mark Clayton banding birds with his long-term bird-banding project at Charcoal Tank Nature Reserve near West Wyalong. The study site is in western New South Wales, in a remnant of once extensive woodland growing on the western plains.

  Striated Pardalote Pardalotus striatus, with a yellow wing spot

It is still early Spring and many migrants are on their return flights home to their respective breeding grounds after spending winter elsewhere. And one of the birds we caught and banded was of a race of Striated Pardalote Pardalotus striatus, which only breeds in Tasmania, but overwinters within the range of two other races of Striated pardalote. On the same day in the same place, we also caught and banded pardalotes of the eastern race, P. ornatus, which only breeds in south-east Australia. The distinguishing feature between them is the colour of their wing spots - coloured tips to their greater primary coverts. In the Tasmanian race they are yellow, and in the Eastern race they are red.

                                                              Striated Pardalote Pardalotus ornatus, with a red wing spot

                                                      Striated Pardalote Pardalotus striatus, showing the yellow tips  to 
                                                      the primary coverts which merge when folded to form the wingspot,
                                                      and a single narrow white stripe on the seventh primary. 
                                                      (Pardalotes only have nine primaries).

The study site sits on the boundary between the range of the P. ornatus race and that of the very similar race P. substriatus, which breeds in west and central Australia. The two races described above have only a narrow white wingstripe on the outer web of one primary feather (p7), while the P. substriatus race has a wide stripe over several primary feathers (p3-7). See the report for September 20 2011 for comparison with these. Click on this link to go directly there. Pardalote substriatus

Book review

There is a review of my book Eagle Days in the current issue of  British Birds.

'there is no shortage of information about the eagles themselves and there are detailed accounts of many fascinating aspects of eagle behaviour based on first hand observations.....
The book is superbly illustrated with the author's own photographs....'

Click on the link below to read the full review by Ian Carter.

http://www.britishbirds.co.uk/book-reviews/eagle-days-by-stuart-rae


And there was another recent review in the British Ecological Society's Bulletin.

'This is a fascinating read by one of our finest hill naturalists who has spent much of his life
observing golden eagles and other wildlife in the Scottish Highlands...... 
Ecologists, hill walkers and naturalists working in upland areas would do well to read this book to broaden and deepen their knowledge.'

Wattle in flower

There is a tremendous bloom of wattle in Canberra this year. Whole hillsides are bright yellow and the bushes are full of insects and birds. But not all the birds are there to chase the insects or sip nectar. This pair of tawny frogmouths were quietly roosting on an old tree limb, basking in the sunshine. Their part-built nest was fifty metres away. The male is on the left - he is slightly larger and has less rufous on his neck and wing coverts.

 

Tawny Frogmouths breeding

The first tawny Frogmouths are now incubating eggs.So the field season is now on for me until at least Christmas. That means lots of walking through the woods, checking locations where there have been frogmouths nesting in previous years and always looking out for more in new places.

A male frogmouth sits on his nest, as all males do during the day.

His female sits quietly all day in a nearby tree, they will share the 

incubation during the night, never leaving the eggs unattended.

Garden Possum

Brush-tailed possum in the garden

Click on the link below to watch the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8bYBfLH70E

I have set up a trap camera in the back garden to try it out and here are the first results. These are infra-red images of a Brush-tailed Possum, which are our common garden pet/pest depending on one's attitude to wildlife. He is feeding on scraps which we place on the old log for the birds during the day and the possums at night.

Not bad, for my very first wildlife film.

The camera I am using is a Bushnell Trophy Cam HD, and it was set about 4m from the log..