MFF with a difference - Tallagandra Lanem Sutton

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Curious connection there. That would seem odd that Nine-primaried oscines would behave any different from ten-primaried oscines  Actually I am not sufficiently involved in that taxonomic character to remember which birds were in which group. So I looked at the link that Martin provided and by my quick reading of it, I suspect that none of our native (Australian) passerines are in the Nine-primaried oscines group. Going by the families listed, and thinking for about 10 seconds, I believe that the only wild birds we have in Australia that would be Nine-primaried oscines would be the Goldfinch and Greenfinch. So I think it is not very relevant.

 

Anyway I think that Canberra area shows the pattern of behaviour very well.

 

I would be surprised if we could settle on one nuclear species. Surely that is variable as are the other components.

 

Philip

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: martin butterfield [
Sent: Saturday, 21 May 2011 5:52 PM
To: Geoffrey Dabb
Cc:
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] MFF with a difference - Tallagandra Lanem Sutton

Geoffrey

According to the version I have
accessed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-species_foraging_flock
was last updated on 29 April 2011 so it is possibly not that out of date. 
Its content is however very dense and I couldn't really make much sense of
it.  This may be because I am averse to terms such as "Nine-primaried
 oscines" or possibly because it seemed to be heavily focussed on the 
tropics.

I wonder whether what we term "mixed feeding flocks " are not
more like (quoting from that Wikipedia article)  " feeding aggregations,
which are congregations of several species of bird at areas of locally high food
availability."  Googling the "feeding aggregations" term gave little of
relevance to this discussion.  

I googled ‘’Mixed-species foraging
flock’’ and the most commonly cited "scholarly" article was  http://www.jstor.org/pss/1942443
from 1969.  As with most scholarly articles it is not available to mortals
outside the gleaming halls of academe (unless one pays an exorbitant fee) but
hopefully the abstract will give the idea.

Martin

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Geoffrey Dabb <> wrote:

Good Michael.  Speeding vehicles are the bane of roadside birdwatchers on country roads.

 

We seem to have settled on ‘’MFF’’ in this part of the world.  In some places ‘’bird wave’’ is used.  There is a Wikipedia article (not updated for some time) under ‘’Mixed-species foraging flock’’.  Around Canberra seems to be as good as anywhere to study our woodland/grassland ones.  One question is whether a particular flock is mainly feeding or ‘’moving through’’.

 

Another question is ‘’What is the nuclear species?’’   Steve Wilson used to suggest the YR Thornbill, and that flocks tended to disintegrate when the YRTs broke off to start nesting.  I’ve noticed a lot of Buff-rumpeds, so far, with the woodland flocks this year and they certainly contribute to the noise side of things.    

 

From: MJ and ME [
Sent: Saturday, 21 May 2011 4:56 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] MFF with a difference - Tallagandra Lanem Sutton

 

G'day,
 
  Went for a drive along Tallagandra Lane this afternoon. At about the halfway point there was a MFF consisting of Diamond Firetails (about 10), Scarlet Robin (2), Australian Pipit (about 20), Yellow-rumped Thornbills (too many to count) and about 10 White-fronted Chats. They were on the edge of the road in tussocks of grass but feeding on the ground. Would have spent ages watching them except a car came along at great speed and scared them all off. Some of the Diamond Firetails were juveniles with black beaks.
 
Michael Kingsford