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We don't feed the birds much these days. Used to grow sunflowers and put
out the seeds which attracted rosellas and galahs until the sulphur-crested
cockies moved in and made a darned nuisance of themselves. Recently we saw a
picture in a US magazine of birds feeding on a skinned orange so, on Sunday
morning, we put out an orange. Fifteen minutes later we had groups of up to
seven Silvereyes at a time partaking a hit of Vitamin C.
By afternoon the orange was pretty well depleted and we noticed the
remnants were attracting numbers of tiny dark wasps. Kept an eye out for
European Wasps, but thankfully they didn't eventuate. Put out another orange on
Monday and again crowds of Silvereyes followed by the little wasps. Alas, the
Tuesday morning orange was promptly pinched by plurry, purloining piebald
currawongs. Wednesday's orange suffered the same swift fate. Thus ends our
orange-feeding experiment.
John K. Layton
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