Yellow-faced Honeyeater - a banding control

Yellow-faced Honeyeater : 026-11399

When I was out helping Richard Allen and others mist-netting birds for banding  a week or so ago at the Weddin Mountains in New south Wales, we caught a Yellow-faced Honeyeater Lichenostomus chrysops which had been banded previously elsewhere. We now have the information on where that was. The bird was banded and identified as a first year (1) female in 2011, in the Warraderry State Forest. So it is now a three-year old (3) and has moved 29 km from the initial banding site.  

We use the shape of the alula tip as an aging guide, and we had already designated the bird as an adult (1+) on the basis that it had a pointed alula. Young birds have rounded tips on their alulae.

This is only the 18th record of a banded Yellow-faced Honeyeater moving over twenty kilometres, although for a widespread and abundant breeding bird of south-east Australia, which is known for its spectacular north-eastern orientated migration flocks, little is known on how far they migrate other than birds winter in eastern Queensland. Some birds also spend the winter in the south east, so which birds travel and where. As there are so few records from banding, perhaps attaching tracking devices to some birds would help answer this question. This is a common species yet we do not know its full life story. If a suitable system could be developed, the methods could be adapted to address similar questions on endangered species. For it is important to know where rare birds migrate, or even move locally, in order to conserve their habitat requirements in all parts of their range. Work of this type is well established in other countries and is providing enlightening results.

The bird had moved between two large areas of forest,  with a large area of farmland separating the sites 

Thanks to Richard Allen for organising the banding trip, Graham Fry for first banding the bird and David Drynan of the Australian Bird & Bat Banding  Scheme for the speedy interpretation and return of the data.

Possums on the roof

A very large youngster - soon to be made to walk and climb on its own 

There were footsteps on the roof last night and then someone scratching at the dining room window. It was our local possum, a Common Brushtail Possum  Trichosurus vulpecula, checking out the food tray we put out for the birds during the day. She had a joey on her back as she scrabbled up and down the drainpipe. It was well-grown, about six months old and ready to be, if not already, weaned. Certainly quite a load on her back if she has do a lot of climbing. The youngster should be off and walking, climbing on its own any time soon, but will still be dependent for perhaps another year before it is cast out of the home range.

Mum raids the birds' food tray

As there was nothing left in the feeding tray we put out a slice of bread and raspberry jam. Mum sniffed it from the roof and came straight down for it. Snatched it, and climbed back onto the roof to eat it. meanwhile the joey had to climb up on its own, perhaps for the first time. It wasn't very agile on the overhang moves. But they won't take long to master.

A special treat of jam on bread -only the best organic for them

Lemon Cap orchids

Lemon Cap Orchid  Stegostyla cucculata

I have been out and around Black Mountain quite a bit recently, but have not found as many orchids in flower as I had hoped. The most abundant species over the past week has been the Lemon Cap Stegostyla cucculata, a small plant, about a foot high stem, with a pale white flower. 

A hoverfly approaches the flowers

These plants might be easily overlooked by we humans, but the insects can find them, no problem, probably by following the scent - a citrus one in this case. I was lying down, focusing the camera lens on this one when I saw a hoverfly come into my peripheral vision. It was quick, and precise as it touched down on the petals and took a feed of nectar from the flower. Then was off. All done, the hoverfly was fed, the plant was pollinated and I had a photograph. All happy. Wildlife in action.

And promptly lands on the petals to feed

Fledging time

A full-grown Wedge-tailed Eagle chick stands on the edge of its eyrie

Yesterday, while out helping the with a university survey of woodland birds I was fortunate in being posted to a site near where a pair of Wedge-tailed Eagles have a nest. The single chick in the eyrie was well grown and ready to fly. And what a wonderful launch-pad from which to make one's first flight.

The eyrie is set high in a Blakely's Red Gum

Meanwhile the adults soared around overhead and up over the adjacent hilltop, dipping down to watch me as I walked on out of the area. No doubt they had been watching me all the time.

An adult flies overhead - keeping an eye on me

Secure, secured and a snake

An echidna resting between logs

Today began with a bit of frost and the animals were a bit slow to get going. I took part in a local university woodland bird survey soon after dawn and was finished by about nine. After that I went and checked on a couple of Tawny Frogmouth sites.

I always keep my ears as well as my eyes tuned, to the sounds of the bush, and while walking quietly through the woods I heard the distinctive scuffling of an echidna. It was about fifty metres away and I watched as it walked over to a log and promptly burrowed into the litter. And that was that, off for a nap. If I hadn't heard it I doubt if I would have seen it, so well hidden between the logs and leaf litter.

They really tuck tight into corners or hollows

I wonder if any predators would find it in such a secure hiding place, or if any would bother to try and open those spines for a meal?

Who would want to tackle these spines

Then just a hundred metres on, I heard a commotion at an old fence which runs through the wood. Eastern Grey Kangaroos are common - abundant - in many of the Canberra woodlands, and a joey had managed to twist a leg through the wires of the fence. Its mother was standing right over it as it tried again and again to free itself. But it was firmly secured. So, over I went to try and free it, at the likely cost of a few hefty kicks for my trouble. Then no, I was safe. As I approached from its front, the direction the joey had been travelling in and persisted in trying to get away from the fence, it quickly turned to flee from me. And as it did so it twisted itself free, bouncing through the trees non the worse.   

A mother Eastern Grey Kangaroo stands over her joey - stuck in a fence

It was quite a large joey and I really didn't fancy a kick from those hind legs, with claws on the end.

The joey's hind leg was trapped through wires of the old fence

My walk wasn't over though and I carried on looking for frogmouths. That involves lots of time spent looking up trees, trying to pick out the birds from the branches they resemble so well. Fortunately, I always keep an eye on the ground too, as that can save one's neck. By watching the ground I find droppings or feathers which indicate that any otherwise non-noticed frogmouth is up above. Then oops, after spying up a tree I turned and took a few steps, and just noticed an Eastern Brown Snake exactly where I was about to drop my left foot. The snake must have been slow to warm up after the cold night, for I don't usually first see them so close, but luckily I didn't hurt it. Although it didn't like me about to tread on it, so it shot away down its burrow about a body and a half's length away - not quite two metres.

An Eastern Brown Snake - not the one I found today, that one was too quick off the mark to photograph

Brood of three

The male Tawny Frogmouth covers the chicks during the day

The pair of  Tawny Frogmouths which nested earliest in my study area in Canberra now have three well-grown chicks, about three weeks old.

I recorded their activity remotely last night on a Bushnell trap-camera set on an adjacent branch, and they seem to be bringing in moths to the chicks. Certainly small wingless tubular bodies and one very small frog. There are lots of Bogong moths Agrostis infusa in Canberra at the moment as they migrate from their breeding grounds to the hills south of the area. So there is plenty food for all five birds.

Click on this link if you would like to see footage of the three chicks jiggling for space on the nest.

A local speciality

Black Mountain Leopard Orchid Diuris nigromontana 

The orchid flowering season is now well on the way with several local species in bloom. There are over sixty varieties in the dry schlerophyl forest on Black Mountain, in the centre of Canberra, and this one is special. For it grows nowhere else in the world but in the area around Black Mountain. It stands about twenty centimetres tall, growing between tufts of grass and shrubs, and I have seen several little colonies in the past few days. The rich yolky yellow is quite obvious among the dull grey grass stems.

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

Orchids

A cluster of Green-comb Spider Orchids

While mist-netting birds at the weekend, out at the Weddin Mountains, NSW, we found ourselves walking through  woodland understorey grassland, with numerous orchids in the sward. The first species I noticed was the Green-comb Spider Orchid Caladenia tentaculata which was growing in small groups of several flower spikes in several locations. All the flowers looked fresh and newly opened.  

A jewel in the grass

Other species which were frequent if not quite abundant included Purplish Bearded Orchid Calochilus robertsonii (Below), Blue Fingers Cyanicula caerulea, a species of greenhood and one or two species of sun orchid Thelymitra. I was too busy catching and banding birds to take enough photographs of all the species, so I grabbed what images I could on passing and sent them to Denis Wilson who kindly helped to identify them. He has some great illustrations on his own blog at  http://www.peonyden.blogspot.com.au/ .

A spectacular little flower

Buff-rumped Thornbill nest

A well hidden thornbill nest

The woods are busy with the sound of nesting birds at the moment. Some building, carrying material, some scolding in alarm as we pass by and others make almost constant contact calls between one another as they gather food for chicks. Chicks which lie still in hidden nests, but can blow their cover by emitting urgent begging calls as they see or hear their parents approach with food.

This nest is of a pair of Buff-rumped Thornbills  Acanthiza reguloides. It is a neatly crafted ball of bark strips and grasses locked together with spider webs and egg cases, then lined with what looked like a mix of small feathers, kangaroo hair and plant down. Set in a crack behind some flaking bark on an old Yellow Box tree it was invisible from most angles, except from that from where the side entrance could be discerned as a tell-tale round hole in an otherwise linear pattern of bark. 

I heard the adult birds first, calling to one another, then they gave alarm as I approached their nest tree. I could see they were carrying food; a large moth in the first case, the other something very small, so I walked back a few paces and watched the birds sneak into their nest to feed their chicks (3). They quickly set off for another foraging trip, and I knew I had about two minutes before they returned. So I unzipped the camera as I approached the tree, found the nest straight away, took a few shots, and walked away before the birds returned. Minimal disturbance, means minimal risk of predation by ravens or currawongs.

Small birds only need small niches to nest in - some very small

One Frogmouth less

The scattered feathers of a plucked Tawny Frogmouth

Today, while checking what used to be a Tawny Frogmouth territory, looking for this year's nest, I couldn't find anything. No nest, no birds. Then I found out why. There was a cluster of plucked feathers, from a Tawny Frogmouth, lying not far from the previous year's nest site. As the quills were all pulled out rather than snapped off, this is indicative of the bird having been killed and eaten by a raptor, most likely a Brown Goshawk as they nest a few hundred metres from the site. A mammal would have bitten off the feathers leaving cut shafts.

The kill was not recent, and as I could not find even a partially-built nest, I reckoned that the bird had been killed before the pair had began nesting. I still could not find the other bird of the pair, but it might have shifted a few hundred metres, and perhaps found a new mate and still be breeding. That will take another visit to check.

The complete shafts indicate that the feathers were plucked by a raptor.

Tree-creeper bill shape

Adult male White-throated Treecreeper

One of the advantages of mist-netting birds for banding is the opportunity to see them as we seldom have a chance to do so when they are flitting about the woodlands or wherever they live. While we were banding, aging, sexing and measuring this White-throated Treecreeper Cormobates leucophaeus during the same study as the previous blog article below, I noticed just how fine its bill was. There is a graceful curve when seen side on, but when viewed face-on, the bill can be seen to be remarkably tapered to a point. This is an adaptation for probing into cracks in tree bark, where they hunt for their food; tiny invertebrates.

The sleek lines of the treecreeper's bill - superbly adapted for reaching and grabbing tiny insects under bark

In comparison, other birds we caught that day included the Western Gerygone Gerygone fusca with a fine pencil-pointed bill for feeding on the tiniest of insects. Very fine, but straight and simple in line as it has no need for any further specialist shape like the treecreeper.

The tip of  this Western Gerygone's bill is polished by contact with the surfaces it has lifted insects from

There were also honeyeaters, which have slightly curved bills for probing into flower-heads to sup nectar, but their bills are mostly sturdy like that of this White-plumed Honeyeater Lichenostomus penicillatus as they also eat insects. The bill is very much thicker than that of the treecreeper.

The White-plumed Honeyeater has a slightly curved bill for accessing nectar in flower heads

And we caught a the generalist insect-eating Rufous Whistler Pachycephala rufiventris.  It has a broad, thick bill with a curved tip on the upper mandible, which enables it to catch insects on the ground or in the air and hold them firmly. Only when we held these birds successively in the hand did I appreciate just how finely tuned the treecreeper's bill is. Evolution is marvelous. 

An adult female Rufous Whistler: the hooked tip to its bill helps it hold prey tight

Breeding season feathers

Adult Laughing Kookaburra

I was out helping Mark Clayton with several others at a cooperative bird-banding site over the weekend, out by West Wyalong in New South Wales. The season is warming up now and there was a heavy fall of rain several days prior to our visit. Many of the birds were breeding, and I noted how we were catching more male than female birds, probably because the females were doing more incubating.

It was also a good chance to see adult birds in full breeding plumage. Although, as most of them had moulted into that plumage months ago, some of their flight feathers were beginning to look a bit tatty. This Laughing Kookaburra Dacelo novaeguineae, was an adult, although it could not be sexed because it did not have a large blue patch on its back like a primary male would have. As it only had a small blue patch, too small to even see in these photographs, it could have been either an adult female, a young female or a secondary male. Kookaburras are cooperative breeders, and the males also incubate the eggs, so even the presence of a brood patch was no help in sexing this bird.

The bird had a well developed brood patch: a large patch of bare loose skin, with a rich vascular supply

It was still early in the breeding season, so the birds had not yet begun to moult. They all had full sets of old flight feathers on their wings and tails.

A full set of flight feathers

Some of these feathers were beginning to fray at the tips, through wear and tear as the birds go about their business, flying through branches and catching their tails on the ground. The central tail feathers are particularly prone to wear as they project farthest and take most of the abrasion, so they are usually the first to show signs of age. Most of these birds will begin to moult out these battered feathers and grow replacements as the breeding season progresses.

The pair of central tail feathers on this kookaburra's tail are well frayed.

Sugar Glider

A tree came crashing down today

While I was out looking for Tawny Frogmouths today I heard a crash and looked around to see an old tree fall down. I thought it might be interesting to see what animals had been disturbed, or lost their home as I could see that the tree was very old and had some cosy holes for animals to sleep up in.

Sue enough, as I approached, a Sugar Glider  Petaurus breviceps slipped out of a broken branch and scuttled up the nearest standing tree. It wasn't too alarmed by my presence, but did go high up very quickly. For that is their strategy to escape, they can climb well, but they can fly too. And when it reached the highest branches it simply jumped into space and glided onto the next tree about twenty metres away. It landed on the top of another dead tree which it clambered down until it found a hole it could wriggle into. And that was that, a new home, safe from predators.

The Sugar Glider dashes up a tree

Once up high, the glider stopped to watch me. The folds of skin which help it glide can be seen rippled along its flanks.

Meanwhile, take a look back at the first picture. There are a pair of frogmouths up in the tree, in the top left. I noticed the male's tail protruding out from the nest after the glider had disappeared and I could re-focus my attention to my original purpose. 

The male frogmouth is on the left, on the nest, his partner is on the branch above

Tawny Frogmouths at night

The moon and Venus above the female frogmouth

I was out watching the frogmouths last night with Steph and Matt. There were a pair which appeared with fledged chicks last year from an unknown nest site, so we staked out the area at dusk. The female was calling from her daytime roost perch for ten-fifteen minutes as the light faded. Then as it became truly dark she shifted to another perch and continued to call her rapid repeating 'ooom-ooom'. The call is distinctive, but so soft, we wondered how far away her mate was. The call only carried to our ears for about fifty metres. Do they do so to avoid attracting attention from their main night-time predator, the Powerful Owl? Then the male swooped in silently from the shadows and landed right next to her. She twitched her tail, he jumped onto her back and they mated for a minute or so. He then went off and hunted, catching an insect from some foliage up in a tree. She flew over to their nest site and continued to call. 

So, we accomplished our quest to find the nest site and all this happened in about half an hour immediately at the onset of true darkness. There is so much to see in the dark.

The distinctive silhouette of a Tawny Frogmouth - a broad, bushy head and a tapering tail 

Bearded Dragon

Flat out

The days are warming up and the first of the larger reptiles have been out and about. The Shinglebacks Trachydosaurus rugosus are wandering slowly about the bush and others like this Bearded Dragon Pogona barbata are spending much of the days warming themselves up in the sunshine. This one was well camouflaged with its dusty skin matching the open dirt between the grass tussocks. It lay motionless as I stepped past it; its legs hung down along its tail, its skin spread out and the whole body aligned with the sun, all to maximise capture of the radiant heat.

It seemed to be trading off the powers of its concealment against the expenditure of its limited energy, having just warmed up a little and not being very active yet. For it was keeping a steady eye on me in case I did after all pose a threat and it would have to use that little energy to flee.

An eye watches through the camouflage