Keith & Lindsay,
Thanks for going to the trouble of posting that little note, I found it
fascinating.
Reminds me of how fascinated I was the first time I saw White-winged Black
Terns behaving like woodswallows at the Ewan Maddock Dam on the Sunshine
Coast. I think I saw it twice more after that, and soon afterwards stopped
my counts at the site. It was a few years ago.
They would spend some time fishing the waters of the dam, and then whenever
they felt like a rest, they would roost on the wires that ran overhead
across the dam, packed closely together like woodswallows. I kid you not!
Jill Dening
Sunshine Coast Qld
> Hi all You may or may not know but Cairns has Skyrail- a cable car
>that runs from Cairns up to Kuranda in the hills behind. It runs over the
>rainforest hills, the Barron Gorge and the Barron Falls (very spectacular
>this weekend with all the rain). I finally got to go on it as we had
>visitors, very enjoyable and a worthwhile experience. The point of the
>story is the way in which White-breasted Woodswallows have learnt to take
>advantage of the Skyrail. Above the rainforest canopy large swarms of
>insects gather and the woodswallows try to catch them by diving into
>them. However this tends to disperse the insects, so they have learnt to
>perch on the moving cables and be taken into the swarms of insects
>without disturbing them, thus obtaining a better feed than they would
>otherwise and they don't have to pay to travel on it! Keith & Lindsay
>FisherPO Box 2209, Cairns QLD 4870 E-mail:
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