birding-aus

White-breasted Woodswallow behaviour

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Subject: White-breasted Woodswallow behaviour
From: "Keith & Lindsay Fisher" <>
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 22:12:26 +1000
Hi all
You may or may not know but Cairns has Skyrail- a cable car that runs from Cairns up to Kuranda in the hills behind. It runs over the rainforest hills, the Barron Gorge and the Barron Falls (very spectacular this weekend with all the rain). I finally got to go on it as we had visitors, very enjoyable and a worthwhile experience. The point of the story is the way in which White-breasted Woodswallows  have learnt to take advantage of the Skyrail. Above the rainforest canopy large swarms of insects gather and the woodswallows try to catch them by diving into them. However this tends to disperse the insects, so they have learnt to perch on the moving cables and be taken into the swarms of insects without disturbing them, thus obtaining a better feed than they would otherwise and they don't have to pay to travel on it!
 
Keith & Lindsay Fisher
PO Box 2209, Cairns QLD 4870
 

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