Red-rumps, Gould, and mistletoe

[Renée Ferster Levy via Canberrabirds <>]

Thanks Pete. Fascinating.

Now I'll have to hunt up more about the ecology of scale insects! ... and add my photo to iNaturalist for the scale insects.

I wonder whether the Silvereyes might feed on honeydew - since they sometimes feed on nectar.

Cheers

On Tue, 29 Jul 2025 at 17:15, Peter Cranston <> wrote:

Hi Renée,

My partner Penny Gullan studies scale insects of all sorts. So she says anything that looks like wattle tick scale on wattles is that species, This (female)  insect has  a has a very waxy cuticle (up to 2-03 mm in depth) - not to be confused with a lerp which is a sugary-secretion, lattice-work construction made by psyllids and certainly is widely eaten and even 'farmed' eg by bell miners. The waxy cuticle of this scale insect is thick - 2-3 mm - and quite hard (try squashing one) and not very nutritious. I (we) suspect that the juicy scale insect within the waxy cuticle would be much more tasty. Yet neither of us have seen evidence of this feeding. Observations would be interesting !

Pete

On Tue, 29 Jul 2025 at 15:48, Renée Ferster Levy <> wrote:

Thanks for the link. It looks like this might be the same, or a related species, photographed in our Campbell garden on 8 August 2018. The Silvereyes were feasting on them (or their exudate?).

These look like Tassie Silvereyes - is that right?

Regards to all,

Renée

On Tue, 29 Jul 2025 at 12:01, Peter Cranston via Canberrabirds <> wrote:

Nice observation Geoffrey: with Gould, accuracy is always the best guess. The 'warped mistletoe berries' are indeed scale insects, Cryptes baccatus, known as wattle tick scales. 

https://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_softbugs/WattleTickScale.htm

is a nice illustration, with attendant ants feeding on the secreted honeydew. Gould, or Richter, accurately shows the posterior dark spot, the anal area, from which the honeydew is excreted (the feeding mouthparts of the head end are embedded in the plant tissue).  Great naturalists both

Pete Cranston

On Tue, 29 Jul 2025 at 11:23, Geoffrey Dabb via Canberrabirds <> wrote:

There are certainly a lot of Red-rumped Parrots around at the moment.  I'm seeing groups of up to 40 or so feeding on various urban grassy patches.  Coincidentally, while on an online excursion reminding myself about the remarkable publishing feats of John Gould, I came across an example of an uncoloured Red-rump print held in South Australia (first link below).  The detail is remarkable. Look at the shadows of the mistletoe leaves on the back of the male.  Someone, possibly Richter under Gould’s supervision, took the trouble to draw those slight shapes on a stone tablet. I was also keeping an eye out for scale insects.  There is an ambiguous clump on a twig here.  However I take this to be an intended, if unrealistic,  cluster of mistletoe fruits that Gould wanted to include as an added touch of a remembered Australia.  Second link is about how lithographs were made,  third one about mistletoe.   

 

https://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/from-nature-to-stone-to-paper-goulds-birds-of-australia

 

https://australian.museum/learn/collections/museum-archives-library/john-gould/lithography-in-the-time-of-gould/

 

https://au.images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=mistletoe+casuarina&type=E210US739G0&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.anbg.gov.au%2Fmistletoe%2Fimages%2Flarge-image%2Famyema-cambagei-cas-cunn-cu-MF-8882.jpg#id=3&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.anbg.gov.au%2Fmistletoe%2Fimages%2Flarge-image%2Famyema-cambagei-cas-cunn-cu-MF-8882.jpg&action="">

 

 

 

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