Mick,
A few years ago when Brown Thornbills were building a nest in my
garden, I happened to visit someone with a Persian cat and brought
home a bag of its fur, which had been saved by the owner from its
brushing sessions. I wedged the fur in a tree branch outside my
window to see if the thornbills would be interested. Well, the next
time the birds passed by, the female did a double take - her
excitement was obvious. She immediately got to work gathering as much
of it as possible in her bill, until she looked like she had a huge
grey moustache! For the rest of the afternoon and the next day, she
continued to carry beakfuls of the fur into the nest (sometimes
trying to carry more than she could handle and would drop some or get
it snagged on bushes... but she always meticulously collected it
later).
I assume it was the female as this was the bird who did all the
building (and later, incubating) while the other bird followed
closely guarding her.
That particular nest was later predated by a currawong, but the
following month the thornbills were back at the wrecked nest, taking
out the fur lining and carrying it off down the hill to where they
were obviously building another.
A valuable commodity indeed!
Cheers,
Carol
Carol Probets
Katoomba
Blue Mountains NSW
At 12:33 PM +1100 25/10/07, Michael Todd wrote:
Hello all,
The Brown Thornbill nest that I had been watching under my kitchen
window (in Ranelagh, Tasmania) successfully fledged thornbillets
(theres a good word) a few weeks ago. About a week ago i rescued a
juvenile thornbill, that had taken a wrong turn and entered my
house. It was probably from the same nest.
Yesterday, I watched Brown Thornbills pulling old material from the
old nest which had become dislodged from the bush that it was in by
wind. The nest was on the ground in the paddock. I had a closer look
at the nest and found that it was thickly lined with the beautiful
soft coppery red fur of the Tasmanian Brushtail Possum. That nest
must have been warm. I imagine that the thornbills must have got
this fur off a roadkill possum. This in itself is interesting as the
nearest road where a possum could be killed would be a kilometre
away across open paddock. I drive on that road most days and I can't
remember seeing a dead brushy on it (plenty elsewhere mind you).
The fur must be a valuable commodity though as it is being re-used!
Cheers
Mick Todd
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
