Fuscous Honeyeater

[Jaron Bailey <>]

Hi Julie

According to eBird, Fuscous Honeyeaters have been seen at the Botantic Gardens, Newline Padocks, and Mulligans Flat NR over the past 30 days.

JB

comName	howMany	lat	lng	locID	locName	locationPrivate	obsDt	obsReviewed	obsValid	sciName
1	Fuscous Honeyeater	3	-35.27805	149.1102	L921571	Australian National Botanic Gardens	FALSE	2015-05-25 14:05	FALSE	TRUE	Lichenostomus fuscus
2	Fuscous Honeyeater	2	-35.32199	149.2092	L1161311	Newline Paddocks	FALSE	2015-05-25 08:14	FALSE	TRUE	Lichenostomus fuscus
3	Fuscous Honeyeater	3	-35.16560	149.1624	L1180547	Mulligans Flat NR	FALSE	2015-05-17 10:30	FALSE	TRUE	Lichenostomus fuscus

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 11:00 PM, Philip Veerman <> wrote:

As for advice to Julie, generally best to get familiar with the call, to then get to see them. Nothing wrong with “uncommon” but show my point, it is only a word modifier and even less precise than “common”, because it is simply every other status apart from “common” (very rare or abundant perhaps?). I am just as willing to believe the species is both common and uncommon. The Common breeding species is a reasonable assessment given that this is part of a list and thus sort of goes by comparison with other species listed. These ideas have value really only in context of assessments of other species. We are lucky here to have sets of statistics from the GBS and other sets of COG data to help explain these things and be at least reasonably precise. The GBS Report gives for the species:

Fuscous Honeyeater Lichenostomus fuscus

This is one of the less visually conspicuous honeyeaters. At times a group may occupy an area for several weeks during winter and become the most obvious bird around. Small groups of this species sometimes join the other honeyeaters in their April migration. This species shows a typical altitudinal migrant’s pattern, it is almost absent from October to March, rises through April and May to a peak in June then declines through July to September. It is probably because of these variable congregations that the abundance and number of sites at which it is recorded (i.e. records) fluctuates dramatically from year to year. The abundance in 1982 was approximately triple the average of all other years, including big observations of up to 100 birds at Site 18. The absence of nesting records is notable. The only GBS breeding record is one observation of two dependent young in May in Year 21 at Site 203. This could have been from a nesting far away.
Graphs on page: 99, Rank: 42, Breeding Rank: 86, A = 0.15895, F = 37.07%, W = 26.8, R = 5.124%, G = 3.10.

 

 

From: Terry Bird [
Sent: Friday, 12 June 2015 7:55 PM
To: Philip Veerman
Cc: Julie Clark; COG Chatline
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Fuscous Honeyeater

 

What is wrong with uncommon !

Sent from my iPad

On 12 Jun 2015, at 5:41 pm, "Philip Veerman" <> wrote:

Again as always it comes down to what exactly does “common” mean, we do not have any word between common and rare, only modifiers like fairly and rather. They are easily overlooked. It is usually when they are settled in groups that they become obvious for their chattering call. Jack H covered this all in his COG talk last month. For years 3 houses within my GBS area had a row of small eucalypts that were major magnets for this species and in winter there were many of them for my GBS. By unfortunate coincidence or because these trees are difficult to have in the garden these were all removed so I only get the species in passing now.......

 

Philip

 

From: Julie Clark
Sent: Friday, 12 June 2015 3:48 PM
To: COG Chatline
Subject: [canberrabirds] Fuscous Honeyeater

 

Hi All,

 

I saw only my second ever Fuscous Honeyeater yesterday at Mount Rogers (previous one 2 years ago in Harrison).

 

I note that on the COG website it says that they are a Common breeding species.

 

If that is the case, where should I be going to see them? Am I just not very observant and missing them amongst all the yellow-faced honeyeaters or are they in fact not so common anymore?

 

Any information would be appreciated.

 

Cheers

Julie

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Julie Clark

 

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Jaron

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