On Friday, I located a pair of Striated Thornbills building a nest near Hall. The nest was just being started and consisted of a bundle of material on a twig, barely visible with binoculars and I was unable to get a photo of it in the strong
winds. Today the nest was much larger (about its final size) but still being blown around in the wind because of its location in the very fine branches at the very top of a medium sized eucalypt. In the picture attached, the nest is in the red circle in the
lower right corner. When the wind blew, the nest was outside the frame to the left (shown by the red arrow). It must be quit a ride for any bird in the nest on windy days.
For a relatively common species, I was surprised how few nest building records are in the COG database, less than 1 a year on average. However, the small number of records may be explained by how difficult this nest was to locate. I was
also surprised how much these small birds had achieved in four days.
Steve
