Andy Burton's Bush Tours wrote:
>
> Morning all,
>
> have been trying to snatch a break from my Olympic duties to comment
> on the moth query.
>
> Many of my evenings are spent on Garden Island, the naval base in
> Sydney Harbour, where the MS Deutschland and Nieuw Amsterdam are
> moored for the duration of the Olympics. The ships are flanked by
> floodlights which attract thousands of moths and an attendant flock
> of gulls, wheeling above the ships, presumably feeding on the moths.
I think the gulls may be independently attracted to the lights rather
than to the moths. I've observed flocks of gulls circling the
Melbourne Concert Hall and the multi-level carpark adjacent to the
Bayside Shopping Centre in Frankston, Victoria, at night in the past;
there were no moths or other apparent reason for this behaviour.
The gulls were making soft contact calls, but not the loud "pecking
order" calls you'd expect if there was food involved. As a guess,
I'd say the lights were disturbing the gulls from roosting.
On another Olympics theme, I watched the women's mountain bike race
yesterday; much to my disappointment, I didn't see any magpies
swooping the competitors. ;-) They were mentioned several times,
though, along with brown snakes that are becoming active due to the
unusually warm conditions. I heard quite a few birds during the race,
including: Superb Fairy-wren, Fan-tailed Cuckoo, Noisy Miner,
Rufous(?) Whistler, Eastern Rosella(?), Pied Currawong, and
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. The men's race is on this afternoon at
1:30pm, so be sure to check out the birds as well as the race.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Paul Taylor Veni, vidi, tici -
I came, I saw, I ticked.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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