Here is a pretty terrible, if
not incomprehensible, photo. If I didn’t think you were tired of
quizzes I would ask you to guess what it is, what it is doing and where. It
is one of 3 bowerbirds that were feeding in the ANBG on what is, I think,
butterbush, berrigan, native apricot, or weeping pittosporum. Oddly this tree
of the semi-arid zone is one of a few fruiting in the ANBG at the moment, and
something SBBs must hardly ever come across given their more eastern
range. The native apricot in the west can be a terrific bird-attractor,
and I have seen single trees hosting a dozen or more honeyeaters at once –
spiny-cheeked and striped honeyeaters and yellow-throated miners.
The bowerbirds I see feeding
around Canberra are mainly into lawn-grass and clover, and they like the
berries on ivy where it grows as a rank vine. In addition to vegetables, prunus
etc, when available, they probably eat berries of cotoneaster and pyracantha,
but I haven’t actually seen that.
The reason I have a slight doubt
about the tree is that the little label on it says Pittosporum angustifolia and
not phylliraeoides but the only other reference to P angustifolia I can find is
on a list of SA State plants, so it must be one of those confusing name
changes.
