Yesterday -- Sunday 2 October 05 -- I checked out the remarkable
little band of Superb Fairy-Wrens living among the crowds of
Southbank (riverside precinct opposite Brisbane city). During the
time I watched them, the group moved from one dense bush by a jetty,
across the walkway to a shrubbery between the carpark and the path.
There was one male in breeding plumage. High above the jetty where I
first located them, is a single, very modern lampshade. Very steeply
curved, its chrome sides are blinding in the Birsbane sunlight. From
time to time, the male Superb flung himself way up out of the bushes
to the lampshade where, though fully exposed, he slid, pecking,
repeatedly down its sides.
When the group crossed the path to the carpark shrubs he took
energetically to the shiny glass door there.
Part of these birds' habitat, the street-corner plantings by the Art
Gallery carpark entrance, remains uninhabitable by bird, beast or
human, as years of construction work continues there.
When I think of the finches of the Galapagos, and observe how
isolated this tiny population of Superb F-Ws seems, I wonder in what
particular ways they might be evolving in this high-pressure
environment...?
Judith.
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