Hi Margaret
Would you be thinking of Hollis Taylor? Hollis was doing her PhD on Pied
Butcherbird song.
Regards
Denise
--
Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow
PO Box 3460 NT 0832, AUSTRALIA
Ph. 61 08 89 328306
Mobile: 04 386 50 835
Birdwatching and Indigenous tourism consultant
PhD Candidate
Research survey:
For American birders -
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h3NCqTwur3H_2bPlbFtk_2bSpw_3d_3d
For UK and other birders
-http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=adx6k4cK_2fqMWzw79jmrmzg_3d_3d
http://www.denisegoodfellow.com.au
http://www.earthfoot.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baby-dreaming
http://www.ausbird.com
http://birderstravel.com
For copies of Birds of Australia¹s Top End or Quiet Snake Dreaming, visit
amazon.com
on 2/4/10 8:33 AM, Margaret Cameron at wrote:
> Thanks for remembering my previous posting Michael, I enjoyed your report!
> I've changed the subject line in case I cause the thread to travel away from
> the Grey Butcherbird.
>
> Although I still have Grey Butcherbirds in my garden regularly (usually
> lurking in the same tree) I've never heard mimicry again - but then I'm
> often not here. Craig Morley reminded me that he published a similar
> observation of a Grey Butcherbird in Eastern Park, Geelong, in the Geelong
> Naturalist.
>
> It is a puzzle to me - and, I find, to real ornithologists - why they do it.
> When I was a beginner birdwatcher in Sydney I remember Alec Chisholm
> collecting mimicry records; he maintained that the Chestnut-rumped Heathwren
> was the best. There is a good discussion in J.D.Macdonald's Birds for
> beginners: how birds live and behave (Reed,1980) including a paragraph
> entitled "Mimicry perhaps functionless". He does not mention a theory I
> have read somewhere else that predators mimic little birds so the little
> birds will come up to see what is happening and the predator can grab them,
> or they will lead the predator to their nest. We know this is not true of
> our Grey Butcherbirds as ours mimic big birds.
>
> Near Helidon (Southeast Queensland) yesterday 1 April we heard an
> Olive-backed Oriole mimicking small birds - Weebill, Speckled Warbler,
> Silvereye, White-browed Scrubwren, fairy-wren. It did not mimic any of the
> numerous big birds also in the area. Orioles do take nestlings (HANZAB);
> Red-backed Fairy-Wrens close by appeared to be taking food to a nest and
> were certainly very nervous but we thought this was because of us.
>
> After my March 2007 posting someone wrote who was studying Pied Butcherbird
> vocalizations. Sorry I've lost your name but maybe by now you have a theory?
>
> Margaret Cameron
> 2 Cintra Street
> Eastern Heights, Qld
> Australia 4305
> 07 3282 9151
>
>
|
