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Still here - sandbagging on the side

Subject: Still here - sandbagging on the side
From: "Greg Winterflood" <>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 01:30:14 -0000
Hello group

Just checking in=85

Have just moved into a new house and so have been fully occupied
with all that goes with that=85haven't had a chance to record
anything.

Some bird news=85

Despite the semi-arid location of Alice Springs grapes and citrus
fruit grow very well here.  The young grape fruit are growing =96
it is summer down here - and each fruit is about 4 millimetres in
diameter at the moment.=20

This morning, while I was standing under the grape arbour, a
juvenile female mistletoe bird [Dicaceum hirundinaceum] landed on a
grape vine within an arms length of me.

Neither my AT-mike nor Marantz were on hand, but my cousin in
Queensland, who I was talking to on my CDMA phone, could hear the
bird calling.

So not only do I have a back yard full of White Plumed Honeyeaters,
I also have mistletoe birds.

These small birds have the habit of eating the seeds of one of the
eleven species of the parasitic mistletoe plant found in Central
Australia.  When they defecate on a tree after feeding on mistletoe,
the expelled seeds stick to the tree branch and the seeds then
parasitise another host.

I've got no idea where the custom of kissing under mistletoe at
Christmas time comes from.

To keep on topic - so that I mention recording and techniques - I
would like to record the sound the mistletoe bird makes while
defecating the seeds but I think I would need a parabolic to do
that!!

Greg

(New homeowners are always a bit cheeky)




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