You said that number of the noisy miners dropped from 20 to 6? So
maybe food competition is not such a threat anymore but reproductive
predation and predation in general is. Hence they've stopped
harrassing their food competitors (other honeyeaters) and started
even on their resident predators sespecially those ones (such as
Butcherbirds) which will kill the young ones that the group will
inevitably need to produce in good numbers this spring. How that
explains the Goshawk, I don't know ... maybe they don't feel they
have the numbers anymore.
scot
On 21/06/2007, at 1:24 AM, wrote:
Alan,
Thanks for the notes on storm impacts: what's very interesting, as
you so
clearly point out, is the apparent "suspension" of the usual
territorial
arrangements, and animosities.
I've definitely noticed similar adjustments in bird groups around
areas of
Newcastle and Lake Macquarie: the litmus test for me are the Noisy
Miners.
Now, maybe it's because I've suddenly turned to watching them work
very
closely, but it appears they are still not following their
conventional
visitor expulsion routines. Certainly warning calls are issued
whenever a
Goshawk and similar are out and about, but something has changed in
the
resident band's hierarchies. They're letting in yellow-faced
honeyeaters
who were previously sent packing as soon as they so much as looked
at a
flower, but the Noisies are harassing resident Grey Butcherbirds
that were
usually "ignored".
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