Today a green bowerbird was in direct view from the Milburn Seat,
and yesterday from the alfresco tables at the kiosk. Indeed becoming commonplace.
(But how many? I don’t think I’ve seen or heard more than 2
at a time. There are at least 3 at Philip’s. )
In search of some video that was not of a dead bird
impersonation, I arrived at Seat Milburn at 1140, but the little lwb (and it does
look like a small one) did not appear until 1235, performance and appearance as
already reported.
The wait was made of some interest by observations at a range of
1m of dust-preening by choughs. The preferred fine dust was obtained by mining
a narrow hole bang in the middle of the compacted gravel path. The
curious hole left there would puzzle any student of natural history. I
measured it as 45mm depth.
From: Philip Veerman
[
Sent: Saturday, 21 July 2007 1:40 PM
To: Whitworth, Benjamin - BRS;
Subject: [canberrabirds] Little Wattlebird, Satin Bowerbird. ANBG
My
binoculars were complaining about only being used for one bird, so I went to ANBG
yesterday. Among the current crop of rarities, I only found the Little
Wattlebird. It was somewhat near the spot described below. I thought it looked
unwell, very fluffed up and it was also noticeable that its plumage was very
bedraggled, almost as though it had forgotten to moult during the last year.
Happened to arrive at about the same time there as Elizabeth Compston. We also
saw a green Satin Bowerbird. I know others have seen them there but I'm pretty
sure that is a new one for me for ANBG. The Powerful Owl was not in the tall
paperbark (or elsewhere that I noticed).
Sent: Thursday, July 12,
2007 6:19 PM Subject: [canberrabirds] Little Wattlebird, Powerful
owl. ANBG [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Little wattlebird was seen at the Botanic Gardens at 4pm.
It was found a little further-on from the previous record (below). Walk past
the first CSIRO gate to a spot with a Bench seat on the North East side of the
road and a Grevillea newbeyi on the South side of the road. It was in the
Grevillea and some Banksias. It was pretty tame and at one stage was within 2m.
The bird seemed fluffed up, perhaps sick and/or cold. We noted the bronze wings
when ‘hawking’ and had good views of eye, breast, cheeks, head,
very white tail tips, size, striations etc
I also saw the powerful owl in the tall paperbark. I
checked its feet and it looked like something dark was there (prey?) but it
could have been the branch.
Benj
_____________________________________________
From:
Golo Maurer [m("anu.edu.au","golo.maurer");">] Sent:
Thursday, 12
July 2007 12:36 PM To:
Subject:
[canberrabirds]
Brush Wattlebird
Hi everybody,
Apologies for late
posting:
1 Brush wattlebird
was hawking for insects in the Botanic gardens from a big Banksia near the
CSIRO-gate (basically the end of the owl track).
Cheers
Golo
_______________________________________
Dr Golo Maurer
School of Botany and Zoology
Australian National University
