Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gary Blond
The author of the Mistletoebird thread.
>
> From:
> Date: 12/08/2004 16:58:20
> To:
> Subject: Re: [BIRDING-AUS] Mistletoebird
>
> This is an enjoyable thread started by Gary Blond (did he know what he might
> spark off?).
>
> I just love Mistletoes and I hope David Watson will see some of the thread.
>
> A few comments from my position of great interest and ignorance (corrections
> welcome!):
>
> 1. Whoops! I should have written in my first response in the thread about
> Peter Fuller's Mistletoe brainteaser. "Since there is lots of FOSSIL
> mistletoe in Tasmania but no Mistletoebirds I reckon you could work that out
> yourself ! (OK "lots" is an exaggeration).
>
> Haven't heard of fossil Mistletoebirds, though. But the contributions by
> Peter Ewin and Lawrie Conole about Lyrebirds in Tassie and species turnover
> make me wonder if there could be any.
>
> Actually I got the idea of Mistletoebirds being recent arrivals from a famous
> ornithologist, including his suggestion (as I recall it) that they did not
> carry enough calories to cross the Bass Strait. I'd love to hear from someone
> about mistletoe diversity from north Oz to south and the explanations
> (particularly given the marvellous mistletoe diversity in the north outlined
> by Syd Curtis) and the timing of this evolution.
>
> 2. Michael Hunter mentioned the WA Christmas Tree. There is a great website
> which has extensive plant relationships (and like all websites could be
> "wrong" or not up to date - given the way those marvellous taxonomists
> keeping on changing our appreciations). See:
> http://www.thefreedictionary.com/family%20Loranthaceae
>
> It includes the WA Christmas Tree as the sole member of the Genus Nuytsia
> (and parasitic on grasses). (KOFGAS is a way of remembering Kingdom, Order,
> Family, Genus And Species.)
>
> (Incidentally it shows, as members of the Order Santalales, the Santalaceae
> family as well as the Loranthaceae and Viscaceae families. The Santalaceae
> include the root parasitic Ballarts which, together with the mistletoes, are
> host plants of Delias and other Australian butterfly caterpillars (Wood White
> and Imperial White down here). I'd say something about phylogeny and ontogeny
> if I knew enough !)
>
> 3. Lastly, so I am not the only person who is mistaken. The European
> mistletoes are parasitic (or parasitoid) on a range of deciduous trees. The
> one I know from England grows on oak trees and the Druid priests were said to
> ceremoniously cut it down with a sickle at the Winter Equinox.
>
> 4. We have a few records down here of Mistletoebirds feeding on other drupes,
> both exotic, being Coprosma (Mirror-bush) and Boxthorn. Suspicions of them
> taking Cotoneaster and the indigenous Common Boobialla.
>
> And I can still get Mistletoe at Xmas !
>
> Michael Norris
> Hampton, Vic
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