During my time in the Broome Bird Observatory, whenever the mercury
would rise to 45 degrees a number of birds would hit "struggle
street". The Yellow White-eyes would try and crawl and crowd into
root buttresses or knotholes. I could walk right up to them and these
little fellows would still not leave what must have been the relative
coolness of the knotholes and buttresses - even though they were all
packed in together!
You'd get lots of window strikes on those days by Yellow White-eyes
too. To help my little friends out when things got too extreme, I
used to put up the "birdy shower". This was made by plugging an end
of a length of hose and poking holes in it. I'd connect it up to the
tap, hang the lot in a tree, turn it on, sit back and watch the fun.
Without a word of a lie, all the birds would hold a truce as you'd
have one of the local Brown Goshawks sitting there soaking it up
surrounded by Brown Honeyeaters, Singing Honeyeaters, Peaceful Doves
and Yellow White-eyes. Even the hardy Grey-crowned Babblers would get
in on the act. The Goshawk's style was to rustle around in the damp
leaf litter whilst water poured down on her. The others, they just
perched within easy snapping range of the raptor, who obviously
figured it was too hot to eat, while the little bushbirds figured it
was worth the risk.
I can put up images of the Yellow White-eyes odd root buttress
crowding behaviour, if anyone is interested in viewing.
Happy birding
Ricki Coughlan
Belrose, Sydney
On 12/12/2006, at 11:14 AM, Joy Tansey wrote:
I have had a similar experience in the heart of Melbourne with
Silver Gulls taking the same advantage of the minimal shade thrown
by a lampost in the middle of the Queen Victoria Market car park on
an extremely hot summers day.
Joy Tansey
Altona Meadows
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