The White-eared Honeyeater is famous (at least in NSW) for this habit.
It is clearly "the mossy-green, the sunlit honeyeater" described by
Douglas Stewart in his poem "Nesting Time" -
"It thinks it must have hair to line its nest
And hair will have, and it will chance the rest;
And up and down my neck and then my daughter's
Those prickly black feet run, that tugging beak,
And loud like wind it whirrs its green wing-feathers..."
[Extract only - you'll have to look up the rest.]
A good Australian bird list can be compiled from Stewart's poetry -
boobooks, magpies, galahs, the red robins, gang gangs, and red-browed
finches. And the egret poem which begins: "Nonsense, they're
artificial.."
[Douglas Stewart's "Selected Poems", Angus and Robertson, 1973, ISBN 0
207 12530 9]
Anthea Fleming in Ivanhoe, Vic -
It's worth reading about birds as well as watching them!
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