With all this talk about leaden flycatchers, I couldn’t stay away from Campbell Park any longer. Today, I was lucky enough to observe a pair of LFC starting work on a nest, so settled in to watch for a couple of hours. Interestingly, the nest is being built in a completely dead small tree, only 2 - 3 metres above the ground. No overhanging leaves... I wonder if they will stay there after the first heatwave. I saw the occasional noisy friarbird, but no sign of nesting activity in the immediate vicinity. The nearest mistletoe clump was occupied by a bronzewing pigeon. At one stage a couple of dusky woodswallows moved into a sapling near the LFC nest, and there was a great to-do. But then, on closer observation, I found the real cause of the LFC’s agitation. Do kookaburra’s eat leaden flycatchers or their eggs? And if they do, should we have an “I hate kookaburras” campaign? This fellow had earlier caught an enormous centipede. I guess the centipedes already hate kookaburras.
Margaret Leggoe
