Another batch of photos arrived this morning, this time from reader Andrew in Oz. Andrew’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
Yarra Bend, Melbourne, Australia
These photos were all taken in an hour or so, in a bit of bushland three miles (5 km) from downtown in a city of 3ish million people.
The Birrarung River (also, more commonly, known as the Yarra river). Melbourne’s main river. Often very brown – locally known as the river that flows upside down:
Pacific black duck (Anas superciliosa):
Dusky moorhen (Gallinula tenebrosa):
European honey bee (Apis mellifera). We sometimes call this the feral bee. In, I think, a River Red Gum, (Eucalyptus camaldulensis):
Black-faced cuckooshrike (Coracina novaehollandiae). A cute common name is the Shufflewing – when they settle after flight, they shuffle their wings alternately:
Spotted pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus) – female. Tiny bright little bird – common but hard to see and identify. Today I was lucky:
Spotted pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus) male:
Red-rumped parrot (Psephotus haematonotus). More usually seen on the ground in small flocks. Surprisingly well camouflaged in the grass – quite easy to almost step on:
Pied currawong (Strepera graculina). Common, beautiful loud meodious song:
Rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus). One of the most common birds in eastern Australia. Incredibly bright and beautiful – and loud:
Noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala). Another very common bird. A few lines from a review (by noted biologist/author Tim Flannery) of the book “Where Song Began” by Tim Low:
The title of Australia’s most aggressive bird … must go to a rather drab gray member of the honeyeater family known as the noisy miner.
Accused in a scientific paper of “despotic aggressiveness,” the species has been recorded driving off fifty-seven rival types of bird. Indeed the noisy miner’s aggression has led to it becoming “one of the most important mechanisms through which habitat fragmentation and degradation threaten populations of eastern Australian woodland birds.” “They will turn on almost anything,” Low says: “koalas, cows, bats, pigs, snakes, lizards, people,” as well as other birds. And worse, they recruit allies in their bullying, including the aptly named butcher bird—a sharp-beaked, shrike-like predator that the noisy miners leave alone—provided they refrain from taking their eggs and young.
Noisy miners will even recruit humans as allies. Some years ago, a great fracas emanating from a mob of noisy miners outside my house in Sydney induced me to leave my work and investigate. As I stepped outside, the birds fell into silent expectation. Looking down, I saw a python. I got the distinct feeling that the noisy miners expected me to deal with it. But I like pythons, so I left it and returned inside. The howl of disappointed rage emerging simultaneously from dozens of beaks had to be heard to be believed. To get any peace, I was forced to move the snake.
Nice. Look at the colors in that lorikeet!
Great story of the Noisy minor and the python. They sound like very manipulative birds. Not a bad technique for one to use to get things done your way. Just scream.
There are some beautiful birds there.
Thank you for sharing the photos of them.
Why is the river known as the one that flows upside down? I could probably get an AI answer, but would rather hear from a real person who knows the story.
What a great set! And your noisy miner story would fit right into the Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends Facebook group.
Love the lorakeet’s bright colors.
They are pretty but extremely noisy birds! I cannot count the number of times I’ve been awakened at dawn by their screeching.
Nice to see a pure-bred Pacific black duck. Here in New Zealand (where we call them grey ducks) they’re mostly interbred with mallards to some extent, and the facial stripes are generally a bit smudgy. The line about the Yarra flowing upside down was also used in the Discworld novels to describe the River Ankh, which carries so much sediment that investigators can chalk the outline of a corpse on it – I wonder if that’s where Terry Pratchett got it from?
Loved the noisy miner story!
I’ve often seen and heard noisy miners mobbing pythons in the rainforest behind my house. The pythons go for their eggs so no wonder. I’ve also seen them mobbing eagles. They do seem to get along well with the local butcher birds though. Whenever the local family of butcher birds has chicks the parents sing at my front door to get me to come out and toss them peanuts which they catch out of the air!