highlights, SEQ, 500m

[Judith L-A <>]

3/4 July & 10/11 July 2004

Ocean View / Mt Mee

Up on our mountain these past few weeks we have gone from an unseasonably cold June to an unseasonably mild, even warm, July. Life among the Satin Bowerbirds has shifted, too-- Group workshopping has ceased beneath the shrubbery, and M2 (see earlier emails) is hardly ever there to be seen, even though the fig tree continues to fruit. Our dear M1, however, appears to have entered a frantic phase. He is collecting ornaments three at a time in each beakload, and his vocalisations are reaching new pitches. Though a couple of weeks ago one of the older green birds was startling us with his renditions of the calls of larger/noisier birds - kookaburra, YTBlack-cockatoo, currawong - M1 at present seems to be interested in mimicking smaller birds whose calls have a more buzzing or trilling property. These are hard to sort out, but seem like fairy-wrens, Noisy Miners, Pale-headed Rosellas' quieter murmurings, and perhaps White-browed Scrubwrens. One seems to be a favourite for uttering in flight, which is a new and startling effect for us as he flies by! M1 is also snacking on 'salads'-- small green leaves he selects from the 'lawn' and groundcovers, which the bowerbirds here eat irregularly.

        James Nichols in his BrisBOCA talk delineated between the Satin Bowerbirds' two 'advertising' calls (the 'bigger', hissing one of which he found most variable regionally, according to the structure of the bird's environment), and their display vocalisation. Over the past couple of years I'd noticed that the simpler (like a 'bleat') advertising call, which the bird emits from high in a tree adjacent to his bower, is given on my place once the bower is satisfactorily erected at the beginning of the season (which can take some weeks from work beginning). This year, though, M1's bower has rarely been down... So it caught me by surprise on Saturday to hear him bleating from his tree! July. Does this mark the beginning of his breeding season?

        Nests of other birds are appearing in the trees and shrubs of our garden, the Lewin's Honeyeaters and Brush Wattlebirds being most obvious in their busyness; and all around us Rosellas and Lorikeets are swooping and squabbling noisily.

        On Monday a Fan-tailed Cuckoo called.

Two weekends back I took a drive out along the ridges to the west of Mt Mee proper,  on the way seeing to my shock that Indian Mynahs have made it to the hollow-bearing trees around the Mt Mee cemetery, which is in a thoroughly isolated area of pastoral highland!

        Well, but then travelling higher and westward, I came to a rather remote road-end, atop the range in grazing land, with the world laid out below. This place seemed to be a wind-funnel. Here I had the great joy of watching two Nankeen Kestrels working the air. How glorious these birds are in flight. I was reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins 'The Windhover', surely one of the most beautiful poems in the English language. Read it aloud! And, of course, another name of the Nankeen Kestrel's is Windhover.

        These birds were being dive-bombed by Welcome Swallows (which rather puzzled me. Would Nankeen Kestrels take swallows?).

        And beneath the swoop and hover of the kestrels and the dash and dive of the swallows, Richard's Pipits bobbed.

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Judith L-A
S-E Qld
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