Over the last few months I have been demolishing my “garden” in the backyard as it was overgrown and senescing (a bit like its owner!!). Prior to doing this I had seen the occasional small skink but only very infrequently. I had forgotten
how many rocks were in the garden until I removed all the grass and general accumulation of debris. Once the garden was opened up I started seeing skinks all over the place. I do have a Grey Butcherbird (on one occasion there were 2) that has been visiting
the yard every week from late February through until the end of April this year, it missed all of May but has been back for the first two weeks of June. In that time I never saw him drop to the ground chasing skinks. Even my resident group of magpies appear
to miss seeing the skinks but they find just about everything else.
The only geckos that I find in the garden are in a very large pile of old wooden fence palings that I am slowly working my way through as firewood. I have never seen them in any other situation and it would be highly unlikely that the butcherbird
ever sees them.
I don’t have Noisy Miners in the vicinity except as very rare passage birds and even then there is usually only a couple. In my part of the world, Kaleen, there is certainly no relationship between butcherbirds and miners.
Mark
