It's time for lunch!

[gemfyre]

This morning during breakfast I spotted a slightly different looking honeyeater among the brown and rufous throats. It's wing feathers were more defined and the yellow on its head was also different. At first I couldn't get a good look because it kept darting away and being chased by brown honeyeaters. As we tried to ID it I finally got a good view of the front and saw the telltale band across the chest. We had a juvenille banded honeyeater. Apparently this is only the 4th sighting of this species here, and it seems the previous sightings were of adults rather than juvenilles. The adult is a much more striking black and white instead of the browns and yellows of the juvenille.

The mist nets set up near the birdbath were promptly unravelled in hopes of catching the banded honeyeater. Unfortunately it hasn't returned but it did give us a chance to see some birds in hand and get records of what we DID catch - a rufous throated honeyeater, a few brown honeyeaters and a pair of grey-crowned babblers. The babblers are very sociable birds and always travel in family groups. When our captives began to call the rest of the family immediately arrived calling and fluttering and bouncing around the place, they are hillarious to watch.

The raptors also came to investigate the commotion. Good looks at a black kite, brown goshawk and brahminy kite.

Wow, I just thought I was looking at some weird finch then. It was a baby mistletoebird, I didn't know the babies bills were bright orange. But it was certainly being fed by a mama mistletoebird. Noisy little bugger, he emits this regular high pitched squeak (Matt probably wouldn't be able to hear it).

I need to learn how to remove the battery from the CALM 4WD and put it on the charger. I have no idea where to start.

Heh, I just got a good look at that damn gerygone. I've been hearing it everyday but never got a good look before. See people, this is what I see from my office.

And there have been huge flocks of oriental pratincoles wheeling about all day. The one I saw just then also contained about 20 gull-billed terns.

I'd go down netting with these guys, but I'm the only one manning the fort at the moment. They're here for 3 weeks though so I'll have more opportunities.

Going to post this now while I'm online - update later this arvo hopefully.

Matt - I will upload full size photos to a certain folder in daycare webspace - you then save them to your HD. When you have a disks worth you can burn 'em if you like. Just so I have a copy of the original, full size shots. No zip program on this computer - I don't know how to zip anyway.

Comments

[firvulag.livejournal.com]

Yeah, ok. If you want to get a zip program for it, look at winace, or winzip. i think winace is better, but not sure on the new versions of winzip and the formats it supports. zipping a bunch of files is as simple as having them in a folder and right click - send to compressed folder, or something similar.

Good thinking though to keep the unaltered originals, and i probably will burn a disk when i have enough. provided i can get my burner working that is...

[lush-1984.livejournal.com]

hey BJ, do you know what the rainforest bird is called that emits a long whistle and then what sounds like a droplet at the end of the whistle?? its commonly heard in australian rainforest tapes and my mum heard it a lot in queensland?

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

Most likely an eastern whipbird. Like a whipcrack?