Honeyeater Migration

[Sue Lashko <>]

In Macquarie yesterday the honeyeaters starting moving through from 0930.  For the next 2 hours I estimated 500 birds, 10% White-naped and the rest Yellow-faced.  Flocks varied in size from ~60 down to ~20.  From 1130 fewer birds came through in smaller flocks, interestingly all Yellow-faced, with the last flock of 13 at 1630.  So total for the day about 800.  I was outside pruning all day (with pencil and paper in pocket) so those figures are fairly accurate.

 

Sue

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Lindsay Hansch <> wrote:

We arrived back from Tasmania on Sunday evening.  Yesterday not a honeyeater was seen over Jerrabomberra, likely due to the wind.  Today was a different story.  We played badminton this morning returning home at about 11:30 to see our first migrating honeyeaters.  There has been a constant stream since.  In a half hour around 1:00 about 3000 passed over our house.  They slackened off after that but there are still flocks of up to 80 birds passing every couple of minutes.  Flock sizes seem larger this year (may have been a good breeding year) with 70-80 being the norm today at least (previous years it has been around 40 birds) and the largest flock was 5-600.  They were mostly Yellow-faced with the odd White-naped.

 

Lindsay Hansch