Rex Gilfillan wrote:
Ray Brereton (working with the Swift parrot, Parks and Wildlife,
> Tasmania), suggests that the increased planting of flowering trees
> in parks and gardens has markedly increased the city populations of
> nectar eaters, both lorikeets and honeyeaters. He suggests that the
> larger and more aggressive honeyeaters are competing with smaller
> honeyeaters to the detriment of the smaller birds, and that the
> lorikeets have little effect on population (apart from local
> dominance at feeding sites). Do you know of any research done on
> this?
I can't help you with urban birds, but my research is on bird usage
of farm windbreaks, so is similar in a way.
I wasn't studying behaviour so my comments are only observations. I
noticed almost no aggression between Red Wattlebirds and the smaller
ones (although they were very aggressive to the wretched pardalotes).
The most common honeyeaters using the windbreaks (which were in the
Central and Southern Tablelands of NSW) were both quite small:
White-plumed Honeyeater and Yellow-faced Honeyeater. The most
abundance species by far was Superb Fairy-wren. Contact me direct if
you would like any actual data.
Cheers
Cilla Kinross
To unsubscribe from this list, please send a message to
Include ONLY "unsubscribe birding-aus" in the message body (without the
quotes)
|
