I have no doubt that more than the usual numbers of silvereyes have been about this last couple of months. Perhaps they are just staying longer in view of the amount of food. In particular, I have seen them at a number of locations feeding actively on nightshade berries, which are everywhere at the moment. Yesterday, for example, I saw them feeding on a few scruffy plants along the path to the Bittern hide and at several places around Q’beyan sewage works. This is the plant that I was told as a child was ‘deadly nightshade’ but in fact is Common or Blackberry Nightshade Solanum nigrum, not all that poisonous if at all. It is readily spread by birds, these ring-eyed chaps being chief offenders, I believe, which is why it comes up in gardens and moist weedy spots all over our area. With the bumper crop after the wetter than usual summer and the number of busy spreaders around there is going to be a lot more of it. Incidentally, ‘active feeding’ is the appropriate phrase because quick nervous flights are the pattern when these birds feed near the ground, unlike their relative lack of concern when feeding in trees. A characteristic shared by other small birds of course.
