The overnight wind seems to have increased the honeyeater migration, at
least at my place. Yellow-faced HEs were calling very loudly outside my
bedroom window round 6:15 am and there seemed to be more around when I went to
work. Andrea then saw at least 20 doing their typical tree top to tree top
movement. Up to this GBS week there had been just a few around, but they
have been a bit more prevalent in the past week, including five I saw migrating
last Friday.
Interestingly there was also a Fuscous HE in my GBS site that day, which
hung around long enough for me to fetch the binos to confirm it wasn’t a
White-plumed HE as it wasn’t giving its full call.
The Red Wattlebird migration I mentioned in my September Gang-gang column
stopped after about a week (though there seemed to be a few doing it this
morning). Of more interest was that numbers a week or so after dropped
significantly, mainly caused by the abandonment of the two main flowering
ironbarks. Why they did so is unclear, as they continued to flower
profusely, and attract lots of insects, including bees.
Jack Holland
