Last week I had some bony remnants of a fish dinner (basically head and spine) that I intended to feed to Silver Gulls at Lake Tuggeranong, however finding
none of them, I opted to feed a few ravens, which accepted bits, although not overly enthusiastically. Also a magpie came to share and during the process a butcherbird that had presumably been watching, although I had not noticed it until it quickly came down
and grabbed a bit and flew off.
Black Kites if familiar with people, are also very adept at catching food thrown to them.
Philip
From: Geoffrey Dabb [
Sent: Sunday, 12 August, 2018 2:54 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] A feathered fork-feeder
A great little catcher, the butcherbird. Some years ago at O’Reillys I remember the early morning bird-guide pelted a small piece of meat at a bbird which snapped it up effortlessly. ‘That’s a slips catcher for you’ said the guide, to
the bafflement of the Americans in the party. This morning the local bbird, a surprisingly brown chap for a bird near the end of his second year, had been particularly vocal, and showed himself prominently while the magpies were getting their bit of Costco
premium lean mince. I flung a morsel at him which he accepted effortlessly. He swallowed that, but when given a second piece he flew to a nearby shrub and put it in a fork only about 1m from the ground. It was still there an hour later but gone after 5
hours, whether taken by magpies or currawongs or butcherbirds I cannot say.
