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That may be so and is what adds weight to the
situation that in this case mimicry may be used as an additional method of at
least temporarily attempting to keep a piece of feeding resource to itself.
However when there IS mimicry (as in I wrote "Regent Honeyeaters' mimicry
of Red Wattlebirds and Little Wattlebirds") they STILL respond, indicating
that the mimicry is understood as being of some relevance to the model. I didn't
detect any strong response of Red Wattlebirds to playback of normal calls of a
Regent Honeyeater, well not enough on a few tries to suspect anything was
happening. This is in the absence of any visual cues of any bird making the
sound, just me and a machine. This is in direct contrast to all other cases of
bird mimicry. Other birds being mimicked by Lyrebirds for example don't respond
to the Lyrebird as though it was their own species. The point of this special
case is that the does model respond to the mimicry by another bird species of
its own species.
Philip
-----Original Message-----
From:
<>
To:
<>
Date:
Monday, 2 December 2002 7:56
Subject: [BIRDING-AUS] Re: Use of
tapes (RH, RW)
Philip Veerman wrote "Red
Wattlebirds respond to playback of calls of Regent Honeyeaters'
mimicry
of Red Wattlebirds and Little Wattlebirds."
Yes, perhaps they
do. But Noisy Friarbirds, Striped Honeyeaters and Noisy
Miners
also respond to Regent Honeyeater calls. Nothing to do with
mimicry - just good old "Get out of my
territory".
Cheers
David
David Geering
Regent
Honeyeater Recovery Coordinator
NSW National Parks & Wildlife
Service
P.O. Box 2111
Dubbo NSW 2830
Ph: 02 6883 5335
or Freecall 1800 621 056
Fax: 02 6884 9382
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