Re: birding-aus Species cleansing

Hi Pat

Couple of points:  here in Melbourne there's a major road into the city
(St Kilda St), littered with offices and high rise apartment blocks. A
small public garden has proper bushes and hedges and White-browed
Scrubwrens breed there. All too often our public open spaces - and
increasingly house blocks - are stripped of understorey in which species
like this can hide (eg. from sparrows which will "borrow" nesting
material from other species).  

The Rainbow Lorikeets (as mentioned several times on Birding-Aus) are
rapidly re-colonising Melbourne (having left about 100 years ago) partly
because of the planting of eucalypts in streets and partly because they
are bigger than Mynahs.  

Without appropriate planting only larger native birds will survive here.

Michael Norris
Hampton Vic.

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