I've been walking on Red Hill (suburban Canberra) a bit recently and
observing some autumn/winter feeding flocks. The hills of the ACT are a bit
cold and bleak and birdless in autumn and winter and it isn;t until you
catch up with one of these flocks that you see many small passerines. One I
encountered this morning was a real beaut with about 100 birds streaming by
for ten minutes or so, including:
Scarlet Robin (1)
Golden Whistler (1) (adult male)
Grey Fantail (5)
Buff-rumped Thornbill (20)
Silvereyes (ssp lateralis) (c 50)
Red-browed Firetails (20)
Spinebill (3)
a pair of Speckled Warblers and a party of Superb Fairy Wrens also joined in
as the flock passed by.
However, one observation I have is that although Pardalotes join in these
flocks sometimes, another leaf-gleaning sp, Weebill, hardly ever does.
Instead they seem to form single sp flocks of up to 30 birds, and the
twittering and calling of these flocks can be heard from a long way away.
Does this square with other observers'observations?
John Leonard
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
