Good morning Robin,
Your unidentified bird is a Superb Fairy-wren,
and while it is hard to judge from the photograph, appears to have a dark (black)
bill and a dark (blue) tail making it a male in eclipse plumage. Bands have
been put on most of the Superb Fairy-wren population in the Australian National
Botanic Gardens as part of a very extensive long term study by scientists and
students at the ANU.
Mark
From: Robin Hide [
Sent: Friday, 27 March 2009 9:28
PM
To: canberra birds
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds]
Double-barred Finches and large numbers of Mclays's Swallowtails @ ANBG
In the ANBG late this afternoon, there were still many
beautiful Macleay Swallowtail butterflies beside the rainforest feeding on
nectar - but no Finches in sight
(see also http://www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/insects/macleay-swallowtail-butterfly.html)
Many usual birds around, but there was one small bird with two bands on its
right leg, that moved too quickly for me to identify (suggestions welcome
please!), or to sight any marks on the bands. It was in the vicinity of what
appeared to be a female Golden Whistler, with a Yellow-faced Honeyeater feeding
on blossom higher up in the canopy.
Robin Hide
martin butterfield wrote:
Being in the vicinity of
the Gardens when I received this I went for a stroll around the outside of the
rainforest gully but couldn't locate such a cloud of butterflies. However
I did see a few Swallowtails (no idea of species) flying around a flowering
Correa laurenceana (I think that is the right spelling) opposite bed 124.
(Unhelpfully, the sign giving the bed number faces away from the road, but it
is only a short way up the track from the Cafe near a works depot.)
Possibly as the sun had moved around the cloud seen by Dimitis had moved
elsewhere.
Martni
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Dimitris Bertzeletos
<>
wrote:
Just came back from the gardens where I saw 2 Double-barred Finches and around
40 Mclay's Swallowtial and 1 Dainty Swallowtail feeding on a flowering next to
the rainforest section (sorry I don't remember the number of the patch). It was
pretty spectacular and judgging from the number of unblossomed flowers should
continew on for a week unless the butterflies move on...
Cheers and good birding.
Dimitris
