Ian’s Bird of the Week – Hall’s Babbler

June 12, 2014 by Lee

Here is another of the Bowra specialties, Hall’s Babbler, which has a restricted range in dry scrubland in western Queensland north to about Winton and northwestern New South Wales south to about Brewarrina.

If you think it looks just like a White-browed Babbler, you won’t be surprised to hear that it was overlooked as a separate species until 1963 and was first described in 1964. It was named after Harold Hall who funded five controversial bird collecting Australian expeditions in the 1960s and the species was detected, and presumably ‘collected’, on the first of these. It’s larger than the White-browed, 23-25cm/9-10 in length versus 18-22cm/7-9in, is darker overall, has a shorter white bib abruptly shading into the dark belly and a much wider eyebrow. DNA studies suggest that it’s actually more closely related to the Grey-crowned Babbler. It’s voice is described pithily by Pizzey and Knight as ‘squeaky chatterings … lacks “yahoo” of Grey-crowned and madder staccato outbursts of White-browed’. Babblers are clearly birds of great character.

It’s quite common at Bowra in suitable habitat, mainly mulga scrub, and on this occasion we found a party of about 20. Like all Australasian babblers, they’re very social and move erratically through the scrub bouncing along the ground and up into bushes like tennis balls. They’re delightful to watch, and infuriating to photograph as the tangled, twiggy mulga plays havoc with automatic focus – no time for manual – and they keep ducking out of sight. You can be lucky and get ones, like the bird in the second photo, that hesitate briefly, between bounces, in the open to look for food. There had been some good rain a couple of months before our visit, and the birds had been breeding – the one in the third photo with the yellow gape is a juvenile.

Bowra is unusual in that it’s in a relatively small area where the ranges of all four Australian babblers overlap. The other restricted range species, the Chestnut-crowned is at the northern end of its range and also fairly easy to find, while the widespread more northern species, the Grey-crowned, meets the mainly southern White-browed.

I’ve had several emails recently from prominent birders commenting on the excellence of the digital version of Pizzey and Knight. Things they like particularly are the combination of both illustrations and photos (including over 1200 of mine), the great library of bird calls by Fred Van Gessel, portability (phone, tablet and PC), comprehensiveness – all of the more than 900 species recorded in Australia and its territories and ease of generating bird lists by location. The good news is that the price has been reduced to $49.95 and it comes in iPhone/iPad, Android and Windows versions. Go here http://www.gibbonmm.com.au for more information, product tours and links to the appropriate stores, and here http://www.birdway.com.au/meropidae/rainbowbeeeater/source/rainbow_bee_eater_15231.htm to see the photo of the Rainbow Bee-eater below.

My apologies for the delay since the last bird of the week. I’m having a major drive to finish Where to Find Birds in Northeastern Queensland and other things are getting pushed temporarily into the background.

Greetings
Ian

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Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Tel 0411 602 737 ian@birdway.com.au
Bird Photos http://www.birdway.com.au/
Recorder Society http://www.nqrs.org.au

Lee’s Addition:

But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. (2 Timothy 2:16 NKJV)

Here is what a Hall’s Babbler sounds like:

Thanks again Ian for sharing another interesting bird from your part of the world.

Our Hall’s Babbler is a member of the Pomatostomidae – Australasian Babblers Family. There are only five species in the family.

Hall’s Babbler – Wikipedia

Ian’s Bird of the Week

Pomatostomidae – Australasian Babblers Family

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush

May 21, 2014 by Ian

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter – 5/21/14

One of the specialties at Bowra is the Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush a mainly terrestrial inhabitant of stony areas with scrubby bushes, particular mulga, in dry, but not desert, parts of western Queensland and NSW with a widely-separated population in Western Australia. It has suffered in eastern Australia from habitat clearance, but can usually be found at Bowra in an area called the Stony Ridge on the road that runs west of the homestead. This location, incidentally is also good for another specialty, Hall’s Babbler.

Quail-thrushes are shy and either sit tight and flush suddenly with a quail-like whirring of their wings or run for cover. The Chestnut-breasted usually runs, but this time we unwittingly encircled this male bird which took refuge in a dead tree, the first time I’ve seen any quail-thrush do so. It looked confused rather than alarmed and wandered for a long time from branch to branch providing unusually good opportunities for photography until it hopped down onto the ground and ran away. On this occasion we saw only the brightly coloured male; females have more subdued colours, brown replacing the all the black plumage except the spotty wing coverts and rely on camouflage to escape detection when nesting on the ground. Quail-thrushes feed on both insects and seeds and there are an Australasian taxon with about four species in Australia and one in New Guinea.

Chestnut Quail-thrush by Ian

Quail-thrushes presumably get the quail part of their name from their terrestrial habits and whirring flight and the thrush part from their body shape. Cinclosoma is bird-taxonomy-speak for thrush in a confused sort of way. Confused because the Latin cinclus means thrush but derives from the Greek Kinklos a waterside bird of unknown type mentioned by Aristotle and others and though to be either an Old World Wagtail or a wader. To add to the confusion, Cinclidae refers to the Dipper family, not the thrushes, with Cinclus cinclus being the Eurasian White-breasted Dipper.

White-throated Dipper (Cinclus cinclus) by Ian

The confusion continues with actual taxonomy. The western race of the Chestnut-breasted is sometimes (IOC) treated as a separate species, the Western Quail-thrush. Meanwhile the geographically intermediate and closely-related Cinnamon Quail-thrush of central Australia desert country is sometimes split in two as well, with the Nullabor race being treated as a separate species, though it has also been lumped with the Chestnut-breasted. If that’s not enough, Birdlife International puts the Quail-thrushes in a family of their own, the Cinclosomatidae, while Birdlife Australia and the IOC lump with the Whipbirds and called them Psophodidae. (Birdlife International use to lump them and call them the Eupetidae.) I though you’d like to know! Let’s just enjoy the photos:

Greetings
Ian
**************************************************
Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Tel 0411 602 737 ian@birdway.com.au
Bird Photos http://www.birdway.com.au/
Recorder Society http://www.nqrs.org.au

Lee’s Addition:

The people asked, and He brought quail, And satisfied them with the bread of heaven. (Psa 105:40)

Thanks, Ian, for introducing us to another interesting bird. Your timing is perfect, as I am away from my computer for a few days.

Ian’s Bird of the Week
Odontophoridae – New World Quail Family

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-breasted Buzzard

May 8, 2014 by Ian

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-breasted Buzzard ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 5/8/14

I went to Bowra Station near Cunnamulla, SW Queensland, to meet some birding pals from Victoria for Easter. Cunnamulla is almost exactly half-way between Bluewater and Melbourne by the shortest inland route (2,532km Bluewater-Melbourne CBD) and Bowra is an AWC reserve, famous for its dry country birds and wildlife. I returned with an intractable bout of flu which has left me horizontal for 2 weeks, but I am now much better and able to tackle long-neglected tasks like the Bird of the Week. So, here is something worth waiting for, one of the less-well known endemic Australian raptors, the Black-breasted Buzzard.

At the end of the drive from Bluewater to Bowra, I saw this raptor perched on road-kill – the euphemism used here for run-over native wildlife – near the entrance to Bowra, thought ‘that’s not a Black Kite’, turned the car round and picked up my camera to take the first photos of the trip. Reluctant to leave lunch behind, it tolerated my approach for about 30 seconds before flying away into the afternoon sunshine, second photo. In both photos, you can see the long, hooked bill that gives it its generic name (hamus is the Latin for hook), reddish crown and nape and the beginnings of it eponymous black-breast. In flight, you can see the characteristic white wing patches on the middle of the first six primary flight feathers, probably its best field mark and the complete absence of barring on the wing and tail feathers.

This was the first time I’d seen a Black-breasted Buzzard either close up or perched. Mostly, one sees them singly and infrequently in flight soaring in the open skies of the drier parts of Australia. They’re common enough to have an official status of ‘Least Concern’ but uncommon enough to give me a thrill each time I see one. Apart from concerns of rarity, they’re impressive birds in their own right, being, I have just discovered, the third largest Australian raptor with a wingspan to 1.5m/5ft and an expert at soaring.

Two days later, we stopped for lunch at this dam at the far end of the property, about 15km/10 miles away from the entrance. A Black-breasted Buzzard soared high above us and then came round and flew overhead for a closer look, fourth photo. Comparing the pattern of wear on the flight feathers, indicates that this was the same individual. In this photo, the black breast of the adult bird is obvious as are the rusty flanks. Apart from dark blotches on the wing linings, the lack of barring is also apparent.

Black-breasted Buzzards are known to feed on carrion and live prey, but their speciality is the eggs of large ground-nesting birds such as Brolgas, Bustards and even Emus. The latter have tough eggs which even that hooked beak would have trouble penetrating so, amazingly, these birds use stones to break them, dropping them from either a standing position or in flight. Though they are thought to belong to a rather ancient Australasian lineage of raptors this use of tools elevates them globally to the top of the class, sharing this position with the Egyptian Vulture which also throws stones at eggs. The Black-breasted Buzzard is the sole member of its genus (monotypic) and its closest relative is though to be the Square-tailed Kite, another monotypic, uncommon Australian endemic with dubious, gastronomic tastes, in its case nestlings. This ancient lineage is thought include a third Australian endemic, the Red Goshawk, and several New Guinea species including the long-tailed buzzards and perhaps the New Guinea Harpy Eagle. This just goes to show how indiscriminately common names like buzzards, goshawks, kites and eagles are applied to raptors.

The last photo shows a juvenile Black-breasted Buzzard photographed at a joint pre-merger Birds Australia and Townsville BOCA outing to a dry country station called Pajingo, south of Charters Towers in 2009. As you can see the juvenile lacks the black breast of the adult, though pale patch on the wing is very similar. At the time, we unanimously agreed that this was a pale morph Little Eagle. I posted it at such on the Birdway website and it wasn’t until last year that the error was brought to my attention. This is what Steve Debus, one of the Australian experts on raptors said: “the image shows virtually no typical light-morph Little Eagle characters, such as the pale ‘M’, or the barring on flight feathers (including primary ‘fingers’) and tail, feathered legs etc.” and other points made were the long, slender bill of the Black-breasted Buzzard and the ‘chunkier’ head of the Little Eagle. Good to know.

Best wishes
Ian

Lee’s Addition:

But these you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, (Deuteronomy 14:12 NKJV)

What a neat bird, but I agree with the verse. Don’t think I would care to eat a buzzard, especially after it eats “road-kill” The colors on this Buzzard are really neat and would help it stay disguised until it is too late for its prey.

The Black-breasted Buzzard is a member of the Accipitridae – Kites, Hawks & Eagles Family. Out of the 256 species in the family, 28 of them are Buzzards.

I just realized that I have not had any articles in the Birds of the Bible for Buzzards. Will have to make a page for them. Stay tuned.

See:

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Greater Sand Plover

April 15, 2014 by Lee

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Greater Sand Plover ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 4/14/14

As I mentioned in the last email, I took advantage of a spell of reasonable weather to make a trip to Cairns to take location photos for Where to Find Birds in Northeast Queensland. On the way back, I visited Coquette Point near to check it out as it is listed in the book as a good spot for both mangrove birds and waders. Coquette Point and Flying Fish Point are the charmingly named headlands on the southern and northern banks of the mouth of the Johnstone River on which Innisfail, 100 km south of Cairns, is situated.

Although it mightn’t live up to the dream of an idyllic tropical paradise – I’m still itching from some sandfly bites and there have been recent sightings of Saltwater Crocodiles in the neighbourhood – it did indeed turn out to be good for birds. As well as a pair of Beach Stone-Curlews in the mangroves, there were several pairs of Greater Sand Plovers feeding in the shallows. At this time of the year, many waders are migrating back to their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere and it is a good time to look for ones in breeding plumage, such as the one in the first photo.

In non-breeding plumage most waders are, frankly, drab and often difficult to identify. Here is a Greater Sand Plover in non-breeding plumage on Cape York. This particular individual shows the characteristic long legs and large bill that distinguish it from the very similar Lesser or Mongolian Sand Plover, but Sand Plovers are quite variable in both size and bill length and I’m not always certain of identification, even with the aid of photos.

Here, to illustrate the point, is a pair at Coquette Point. The bird in non-breeding plumage looks smaller than its companion, has the slightly hunched posture of the Lesser Sand Plover but its large bill, and guilt by association, would indicate a Greater.

Finally, to complete the series, here is one of the Coquette Point birds in flight. The birds wintering in Australia belong to the nominate race leschenaultii and nest in Southern Siberia, Western China and Southern Mongolia. Their movements are not well understood but it is thought that they migrate non-stop, so this at least is one species of wader that doesn’t have to rely on the fast-disappearing mudflats of the Yellow Sea for refuelling stopovers.

I’d always vaguely assumed that the person who named Flying Fish Point did so because he or she had seen Flying Fish there, but Coquette Point aroused my curiosity as there seemed nothing flirtatious about it. With the help of Google, I found out that George Dalrymple, one of the explorers in this part of the world was sent by the Queensland Government in 1873 to explore the inlets and rivers between Cardwell and Cooktown. His boats were two cutters, the Flying Fish and the Coquette and one of his companion policemen was Robert Johnstone. In Dalrymple’s report to Parliament he said “I therefore considered that I was justified in naming the river after Mr Johnstone, a gentleman who has become identified with discovery and enterprise on the north east coast and who first brought to light the real character and value of this fine river, and it’s rich agricultural land…”. This, incidentally, is what 19th Century cutters looked like.

Ancient British Navy Gun Cutter from Ian

Which, of course, begs the question of why a Queensland boat would be called Coquette. The only clue I could find was that the first Royal Navy ship called Coquette was a 28 gun one captured off the French in 1783 and put into service. After that the name ‘Coquette’ was used repeatedly for a series of smaller ships.

Greetings
Ian

Lee’s Addition:

Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming, but my people know not the rules of the LORD. (Jer 8:7 ESV)

Thanks again, Ian, for sharing another interesting bird. I find it interesting that his birds are migrating, but for the opposite reason ours are migrating. Cold is coming on down there and our are heading home because it is getting warmer. Either way, the birds are on the “move.”

Plovers are members of the Charadriidae – Plovers Family.

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More:

Ian’s Bird of the Week

Charadriidae – Plovers Family

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-winged Stilt

April 1, 2014 by Lee

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-winged Stilt ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 3/30/14

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A few weeks ago, I included a photo of the Black Stilt of New Zealand in a piece on Black-fronted Tern, so I was surprised to find out that no other stilt has ever featured as bird of the week. That’s a serious omission given the spectacular appearance of all the members of this family, the Avocets and Stilts, Recurvirostridae, so here are three variants of the almost global Black-winged Stilt, starting with the one we get in Australasia, often called the White-headed Stilt.

There is disagreement over whether the various version of the Black-winged Stilt are species or merely sub-species. Some taxonomists, none naturally from New Zealand, have even dared to suggest that the Black Stilt is a mere subspecies too, as it sometimes hybridises with the White-headed which colonised New Zealand in the 19th century. The tendency now is to settle on four closely related species, the Black Stilt (Himantopus novaezelandiae) the nominate Eurasian and African Black-winged (H. himantopus), the Australasian White-headed (H. leucocephalus) the American (North and South) Black-necked (H. mexicanus). As we’ll see shortly, the English names are almost as confusing as the taxonomy as they all have black wings, two have white faces and two have black necks.

As a teenager in Ireland in the 1960s, browsing my Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe – which I have in front of me at the moment – birds like Avocets and Stilts seemed unbelievably exotic. The iconic Pied Avocet was, and still is, the poster child of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds following its successful reestablishment as a breeding species in Britain. I saw Pied Avocets in the RSPB Reserve at Minsmere in Suffolk in 1965 and American Avocets in Wyoming in 1970, but it wasn’t until I arrived in Sydney in 1971 that I saw my first Stilt and was amazed to find how widespread and abundant the White-headed is. Almost too much, as these are noisy birds and almost as much of a nuisance as Common Redshanks are in Ireland when you’re trying to stalk shy waders.

I eventually encountered the nominate Black-winged in Zimbabwe in 1992 and again in Portugal in 2007. The female (very little black on the head) one in the third photo is being very vocal and making it quite clear that I am very unwelcome. This time at least she had very good reason for being aggressive as it had four newly-hatched chicks close by, wandering around looking rather bewildered, fourth photo (the fourth chick was farther to the left). Male nominate race birds have more but varying degrees of black on the head and neck, adding to the general confusion.

Finally, fifth photo, here is the American version, the Black-necked. It has a black cap joined fore and aft by a curved band through the eye leaving a white spot above the eye, creating a bullseye effect. It’s showing us why stilts have such long legs and that needle-sharp bill is perfect for delicately snatching small items of prey from the surface of the water.

There are photos of all the Stilts and Avocet, except the poorly known Andean Avocet, here: http://www.birdway.com.au/recurvirostridae/index.htm.

This is a slightly hurried bird of the week, as I’m leaving for Cairns later today. We’ve had a late end to the wet season after a dry false alarm earlier in the month and I want to take more location photos for the book Where to find Birds in Northeast Queensland now that the weather has improved.

Greetings
Ian

Lee’s Addition:

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly and swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly over the earth in the open expanse of the heavens. (Genesis 1:20 AMP)

All three of these “black-winged” Stilts are very pretty. I like the clean lines on them. Thanks, Ian, for sharing these with us.

Our American Black-necked Stilt, which I have had the privilege of seeing several times, has a neat white eye-brow. You can tell they all belong to the same family – the Recurvirostridae – Stilts, Avocets. This family has 10 in it and Ian has 8 species photographed on his site.

I am still amazed at the variety of birds the Lord has created.

Ian’s Recurvirostridae – Stilts, Avocets Family

Recurvirostridae – Stilts, Avocets Family

Recurvirostridae – Wikipedia (They show only 9, but the White-backed Stilt is now a species)

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Coal Tit

March 17, 2014 by Lee

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Coal Tit ~ Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 3/17/14

Here is a St Patrick’s Day special: one of only four avian species that are deemed to have Irish races, the Coal Tit. The Irish race, Parus ater hibernicus, has yellower cheeks and underparts and more cinammon flanks than its British counterpart britannicus.

The other three Irish sub-species are the Irish Dipper (darker breast), the Irish Jay (darker overall) and the Irish Red Grouse (paler overall). Because of sea-level fluctuations with ice ages, Ireland has been isolated from Britain for a mere 8,000 years. The current distances vary from a mere 19km/12 miles between Scotland and Co. Antrim to about 100km/60 miles between Ireland and Wales (Pembrokeshire to Co. Wexford and Holyhead to Dublin). so only the most sedentary or least adventurous species have any to chance of diverging.

The first photo shows an adult bird, while the second one is a juvenile with drabber colours and juvenile Coal Tits tend to have yellower cheeks anyway. Incidentally, there are 21 subspecies of Coal Tit currently recognised, from the Irish one in the west to Taiwanese and Japanese ones in the east. Some authorities dispute the validity of these subspecies because of local variation.

Interestingly the birds in Northeastern Ireland show more in common with Scottish birds, and some would argue that Scottish Coal Tits are different from English ones. We could be getting onto politically thin ice here so, given the unifying spirit of St Patrick’s Day, I don’t think we’ll pursue this topic :-)

Happy St Patrick’s Day!
Ian

Lee’s Addition:

It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:32 ESV)

A pleasant surprise getting a St Patrick’s Day bird to enjoy. The Coal Tits belong to the Paridae – Tits, Chickadees Family. I am more familiar with the Chickadees, but it is easy to see the family resemblance.

The Coal Tit (Periparus ater) is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread and common resident breeder throughout temperate to subtropical Eurasia and northern Africa. The Black-crested Tit is now usually included in this species. (Wikipedia)

Here is a photo of the main Coal Tit species.

Coal Tit (Periparus ater) ©WikiC

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See:

Coal Tit – Wikipedia
Coal Tit sounds – xeno-canto
Paridae – Tits, Chickadees Family
Coal Tit – Bird Guides

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Red-capped Parrot

March 15, 2014 by Ian

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Red-capped Parrot ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 3/15/14

I’ve had a request for a Western Australian endemic from an American friend who is visiting WA this coming September. So here, Laurie, is the Red-capped Parrot which you should see there. The first photo shows a male of this fairly large (length to 38cm/15in), brightly coloured – some would say gaudy – parrot, which is reasonably common in suitable habitat in a relatively small area of southwestern Australia, mainly south of Perth, west of Esperance and within 100km of the coast.

The second photo shows a female, similar to but more subdued in colour than the male, with greenish patches in the red cap and under-tail coverts and less intense violet breast.

The female is perched in a Marri tree, a Western Australian bloodwood, Corymbia, formerly Eucapyptus, calphylla. This is the main food plant of the parrot and their ranges mostly coincide. Marri has tough woody globular nuts and the long pointed bill of the Red-capped Parrot is adapted to exploiting the one weakness in the nut defences – the valve through which the seed is shed. The parrots can prise out the seed without having to gnaw through the woody wall.

It’s clearly a fine source of bird food, as another Western Australian endemic Baudin’s or the Long-billed Cockatoo has evolved along identical lines for the same reason -an elegant example of parallel evolution. The male cockatoo in the third photo is showing us exactly how it’s done: piece of cake really, given the right equipment. Not surprisingly the range of this cockatoo is similar to that of the parrot.

Actually, this bird featured as bird of the week in November 2006, but this is, if a repeat, at least a different photo. The first and third photos were taken on the same day. Kalgan is east of Albany on the way to the famous-for-birding Two Peoples Bay and Dunsborough is west of Bussleton near Cape Leeuwin. Cape Leeuwin has this splendid lighthouse built in 1895 and marks the point where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean.

I did take this one photo of the lighthouse on the same day, but my clearest memory is of a Rock Parrot feeding on the ground near it, but that bird featured as bird of the week in October 2006: http://www.birdway.com.au/psittacidae/rock_parrot/index.htm: a good day for unusual parrots.

Greetings
Ian

Lee’s Addition:

And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (Genesis 1:22 NKJV)

What a beautifully created Parrot. As you may know, Ian allows me to reproduce his newsletter. I use these to introduce us to the fantastic birds around the world. He has great photos on his site.

(This blog is birdwatching from a Christian perspective and therefore I do not believe in evolution, but realize birds have reproduced, producing different variations withing the families and orders. They are all still birds though.)

See:

Ian’s Bird of the Week

Parrot Family – Ian’s

Psittacidae – Parrots Family

Cockatoo Family – Ian’s

Cacatuidae – Cockatoos Family

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-fronted Tern

March 10, 2014 by Lee

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-fronted Tern ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 3/10-14

To mark the 500th bird of the week, here is a rather special tern from New Zealand, the Black-fronted Tern, which I photographed while on the quest for the very special Black Stilt. The tern is special, as it’s a New Zealand endemic, attractive and, unfortunately, endangered. The first photo shows a bird incubating at a typical nesting site on the gravelly bank of one of the branching – ‘braided’ – rivers in the Waitaki Valley on the South Island.

The second photo shows another incubating bird at the same colony four days earlier, when I found the sole Black Stilt. The plant with the palmate leaves is feral Lupin, one of the threats that this species faces, in this case by encroaching on the nesting sites.

I took these photos from a sufficient distance with a 500mm lens so as not to disturb incubating birds, but like many terns they are quite aggressive and other non-incubating individuals like those in the third and fourth photos showed me how unwelcome I was by flying intimidatingly close to me and calling harshly.

They look very smart in breeding plumage with sharp black caps, bright orange bills and legs, and white cheek stripe and rump contrasting with otherwise grey plumage. They’re quite small, 30cm/12in in length, with, by tern standards, quite short tail streamers. In non-breeding plumage, the cap is grey, streaky and less extensive and the orange of the bill and legs is paler. In the breeding season, this is an inland species, nesting only along the rivers of the South Island, though it used to breed on the North Island. Outside the breeding season, the birds disperse to coastal waters with some reaching Stewart Island in the south and North Island but don’t travel far and have never been recorded in Australia. They feed on small fish invertebrates mostly snatched in flight either from the water surface or the ground – they will follow ploughs – and will also plunge into water to catch fish.

The population is estimated at about 5,000 individuals and declining, hence its endangered status. Main threats to the population are predation by introduced mammals particular stoats and weasels, feral weeds, disturbance by people and stock and hydroelectric schemes. Breeding success appears to be low, but colonies do respond well to conservation measures such as protection of nesting sites, removal of weeds by spraying and provision of artificial nesting sites such as rafts. The Black-fronted is one of two endemic New Zealand terns, the other being the marine White-fronted. It’s considered a close relative of the Roseate Tern is quite abundant and many migrate to southeastern Australia in winter.

Website links:
Black-fronted Tern
White-fronted Tern
Roseate Tern
Black Stilt

Greetings

Ian

Lee’s Addition:

the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the sea gull, and the hawk after their kinds; (Deuteronomy 14:15 NKJV)

Ian has again introduced us to another neat creation, the Black-fronted Tern. In that second photo, notice how well it blends in with the terrain. What a graceful looking bird.

Terns and Sea Gulls both belong to the Laridae – Gulls, Terns & Skimmers Family. Ian mentioned three of the Terns on his website, but he has plenty more photos fo that family.

Check out his Laridae Family which he breaks up into Laridae – Tribe: Sternini & Rynchopini (Terns and Noddies) and Laridae – Tribe: Larini (Gulls and Kittywakes).

Laridae – Tribe: Sternini & Rynchopini (Terns and Noddies)
Laridae – Tribe: Larini (Gulls and Kittywakes
Laridae – Gulls, Terns & Skimmers Family
Birds of the Bible – Sea Gulls

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Yellowhammer

February 17, 2014 by Ian

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Yellowhammer ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 2-17-14

Continuing the theme of finches and finch-like birds here’s a photo of a male Yellowhammer along the same lane in Co. Louth as the Eurasian Bullfinch. The Yellowhammer is a bunting and belongs to the family Emberizidae, which includes the New World Sparrows.

When the first photo was taken, the Hawthorn was in full bloom. The second photo was taken 12 days later – on the same day as last week’s Bullfinches – and the Hawthorn is almost finished. Yellowhammers have a characteristic rapid slightly nasal song often rendered as ‘little bit of bread and NO cheese’ with the ‘NO’ higher and the ‘cheese’ lower and longer than the other notes. Sadly, European populations of Yellowhammers have suffered from intensive farming and the removal of hedges.

Like many other European, or more strictly ‘British’ songbirds, Yellowhammers have been introduced into New Zealand where they have done well. Vagrants from the New Zealand population have been recorded on rare occasions on Lord Howe Island, so the Yellowhammer is the only member of the family on the Australian List. The third photo was taken in New Zealand when I was searching at a known site for the extremely rare Black Stilt on the Ahuriri River in the Waitaki Valley on the South Island. I had just parked nearby but stopped to take the Yellowhammer photo on the principle of a bird in the hand . .

In fact, less than ten minutes later I took this photo, which featured as bird of the week three days after I’d taken the photos (I couldn’t wait to show it off!).

The sharp-eyed among you would have noticed that the sequence number of the Black Stilt is 44 greater than that of the Yellowhammer so it was a busy ten minutes and you might wonder what featured in the intervening photos. Well, they were of a smart New Zealand tern called the Black-fronted as there was a small colony of them nesting in the pebbles beside the river. That hasn’t featured as bird of the week, so I’ll hold it over till next time.

Best wishes
Ian

Lee’s Addition:

also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. (Genesis 7:3 NKJV)

The Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) is a passerine bird in the bunting family Emberizidae. It is common in all sorts of open areas with some scrub or trees and form small flocks in winter.

The Yellowhammer is a robust 15.5–17 cm long bird, with a thick seed-eater’s bill. The male has a bright yellow head, yellow underparts, and a heavily streaked brown back. The female is much duller, and more streaked below. The familiar, if somewhat monotonous, song of the cock is often described as A little bit of bread and no cheese, although the song varies greatly in space. Its name is thought to be from the German word ammer meaning bunting.

Its natural diet consists of insects when feeding young, and otherwise seeds. The nest is on the ground. 3-6 eggs are laid, which show the hair-like markings characteristic of those of buntings.

Ian’s Emberizidae Family Photos

Emberizidae – Buntings, New World Sparrows & Allies

Ian’s Bird of the Week

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Eurasian Bullfinch

February 3, 2014 by Ian

Eurasian Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) by Ian

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Eurasian Bullfinch ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter – 2/3/14

In response to last week’s photos of the Chestnut-breasted Mannikin, I received a photo of an American Evening Grosbeak – thank you Jeff – with a similar large pale finch bill. Typical Northern Hemisphere finches such as the Evening Grosbeak belong to the family Fringillidae while all the native Australian finches belong to the family Estrildidae, so I thought it might be of interest to say a little about finch taxonomy and change, as what we think of as typical finch seed-eating bills appear to have arisen independently in more than one instance.

So, this week’s bird is for a change a Fringillid finch, the Eurasian Bullfinch and a favourite of mine since I was a birding teenager in Ireland many years ago. the male is perhaps the most colourful of European song birds and it was always, and still is, a thrill for me to see one. They aren’t uncommon, but are secretive and usually occur in pairs rather than flocks so are easy to overlook unless you look out for their characteristic white rumps as they fly out of the thick foliage of hedges, probably their favourite habitat.

Eurasian Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) by Ian

The bird in the first two photos is feeding on the flowers of the Blackthorn and both its English name and its scientific one Prunus spinosa reveal why it is a popular hedge shrub for stock, having been around a lot longer than barbed wire. It has other uses to including making Blackthorn walking sticks and clubs, such as Shillelaghs. It produces an attractive look fruit called sloes, which look a bit like black grapes but are very astringent.

(edited)

Eurasian Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) Female by Ian

Back to Bullfinches. The female, third photo, has a latte-coloured breast instead of a salmon pink one, but is just as elegant and was the partner of the male in the other two photos. The hedge in question is near my sister’s house in Co. Louth in an area (below) where there are still plenty of hedges and is good for other song birds like Yellowhammers and Winter Wrens.

Recent DNA work has shed some light on the inter-relationships between various families of song birds with thick seed-eating bills, the most familiar of which are the Fringillid finches, the Estrildid finches, the Eurasian Sparrows (Passeridae), the Buntings and North American Sparrows (Emberizidae). These were originally ascribed to the same superfamily Passeroidea by Sibley and Ahlquist (1990) and that grouping is still largely intact but includes other families that do not have thick bills, including the Sunbirds and Flowerpeckers such as the Mistletoebird (Nectariniidae), the Pipits and Eurasian Wagtails (Motacillidae) and the New World Wood Warblers (Parulidae).

It now seems that the Sunbirds and Flowerpeckers split off first, then the Estrildid Finches and Weavers (Ploceidae), then probably the Sparrows and finally the Wagtails and Pipits, the Fringillid Finches the Buntings and New World Sparrows and the New World Warblers. From this we can conclude that Estrildid and Fringillid Finches are not closely related and that a traditional morphological approach to classification would have failed to link the Wagtails and New World Warblers to the Fringillidae.

In case all this taxonomic detail leaves you cold, I’ve included links to the all the families mentioned on the Birdway website so can check out the photos instead. The sharp-eyed among you will notice that the BirdLife International sequence of families on the website is not quite the same as the order here. That’s because it predates the latest sequence which I’ve extracted from a 2012 paper on global bird diversity in Nature by Jetz et al. No doubt the grouping and order will change again in the future.

Best wishes
Ian

Lee’s Addition:

And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. (Luke 14:23)

What a beautifully colored bird and, of course, Ian took great photos. Even Ian gets into the “taxonomic detail.” Those recent DNA work he mentioned is shaking up the birding community. These studies keeping bird guide book writers busy.

The Bullfinch is a bulky bull-headed bird. The upper parts are grey; the flight feathers and short thick bill are black; as are the cap and face in adults (they are greyish-brown in juveniles), and the white rump and wing bars are striking in flight. The adult male has red underparts, but females and young birds have grey-buff underparts. The song of this unobtrusive bird contains fluted whistles.

(Wikipedia)

See Ian’s Bird of the Week and the various links in the article.

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Chestnut-breasted Mannikin/Munia

January 23, 2014 by Ian

Chestnut-breasted Mannikin (Lonchura castaneothorax) by Ian

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Chestnut-breasted Mannikin/Munia ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 1-23-14

Please accept my apologies that it is over a month since the last bird of the week. I seem to have been distracted by Christmas, New Year, etc.

Anyway, here is a spontaneous one. I’m in the public library in Ingham at the moment getting my car serviced. I was planning to work on the book Where to Find Birds in Northeast Queensland, but had a nagging feeling that I should really do the bird of the week. I found a table at the back of the library with a pleasant view over the adjacent Tyto Wetlands and spotted 3 Chestnut-breasted Mannikins feeding on the ornamental grass seeds just outside the window.

Chestnut-breasted Mannikin (Lonchura castaneothorax) by Ian

I had my camera with me and got a couple of photos of one before they noticed me (second photo) and flew away. The photos are a bit cloudy having been taken through glass, but it was good quality plate glass. Members of the genus Lonchura are usually called Mannikins in Australia but they also occur in Asia where the name Munia is used.

This incidentally, is the view of Tyto Wetlands from the library. The dark speck on the lawn in the foreground on the left hand side is the bird in the first two photos.

Chestnut-breasted Mannikin at Tyto Wetlands by Ian

Tyto Wetlands gets its name from the Barn Owl genus Tyto as it is a known haunt of the elusive Eastern Grass Owl Tyto longimembris which nest sometimes in the grassy area between the wetlands and the local airstrip. I have seen them here on a number of occasions and they have been reported here quite recently, but no photos unfortunately yet.

Ingham is quite a small sugar-cane town so it is greatly to their credit that they, under the guidance and encouragement of John Young of recent Night Parrot fame, have created this wonderful wetland and sanctuary. There is also a large wetland centre near the highway, well worth a visit if you are passing this way.

Now back to the book. I finished the bird section and am now taking photos of as many as possible of the locations and that quest has taken me to some interesting spots that I’ve never visited before.

Best wishes
Ian

Ian Montgomery, Birdway Pty Ltd,
454 Forestry Road, Bluewater, Qld 4818
Phone: 0411 602 737 +61-411 602 737
Preferred Email: ian@birdway.com.au
Bird Photos http://www.birdway.com.au/
Recorder Society http://www.nqrs.org.au

Lee’s Addition:

Then adorn yourself with majesty and splendor, And array yourself with glory and beauty. (Job 40:10 NKJV)

Sounds like you were as busy as the rest of us. What a beautiful bird. I love the clean lines where the colors change. Another neat creation.

Munia and Mannikins belong to two different families. This Chestnut-breasted Mannikin is actually one of the 151 species in the Estrildidae – Waxbills, Munias & Allies Family. There is a family with Manakins that can confuse someone because of the close spelling. (Mannikin vs Manakin) The Pipridae – Manakins Family has 52 species in their family.

See:

Ian’s Bird of the Week

Ian’s Estrildidae Family Photos

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Yellow-rumped Munia/Mannikin

Estrildidae – Waxbills, Munias & Allies Family

Pipridae – Manakins Family

Bird of the Week – New Zealand Pigeon

December 26, 2013 by Ian

Bird of the Week – New Zealand Pigeon ~ by Ian Montgomery

Newsletter ~ 12/24/13

Well, Christmas is nearly on us and I’ve put up the ‘icicle’ Christmas lights beside the almost too-warm pool (29ºC), so I thought a bird photo including some real Southern Hemisphere snow would be correspondingly inappropriate. This proved difficult as I usually avoid the snow and the best candidate, the Kea of New Zealand was bird of the week two years ago even though the snow was incidental to the story about Keas’ passion for dismantling motor vehicles.

So I settled for this one of New Zealand Pigeon. The three-pronged smudge above its head is snow, believe it or not, and it’s actually the isolated three-pointed star visible above and to the right of the main tree in the second photo – taken at about the same time and place in the spectacular surroundings of Milford Sound in the Fiordland of the south west of the South Island.

I was there one evening to book a place on an early cruise the next morning to search for fiordland penguins, and having done so went for a stroll and encountered various local inhabitants including Paradise Shelduck, New Zealand Pigeons and, near the car park, a Weka. the third photo shows the same pigeon on the same branch from a better angle and you can see the beautiful purple and green iridescence of the plumage contrasting with the snow-white belly. With a length to 50cm/20in and a weight up to 800g/28oz, these are large birds, as big or bigger than Imperial-Pigeons, Wompoo Fruit-Doves and Eurasian Wood Pigeons.

They’re very confiding, and this one and its mate, sitting on another branch in the same tree, just watched me as I walked around them taking photos from different angles. They look plump and gastronomically appealing, so it’s not surprising that the population declined after human settlement until protection was granted in 1921. The Norfolk Island sub-species wasn’t so lucky: it was still around in the 1830s but there have been no records since 1900.

The following morning dawned bright and sunny, last photo, and a very obliging cruise-boat captain found me a pair of nesting Fiordland Penguins within 10 minutes of leaving the jetty and took us almost alarming close so that I could get some photos: http://www.birdway.com.au/spheniscidae/fjordland_penguin/index.htm.

Now there’s some real snow on the mountains on the left. I wish you a safe and peaceful Christmas and an enjoyable and enriching 2014.
Ian

Lee’s Addition:

Thanks, Ian, and Merry Christmas to you. I like the clean line between the green and the white on its breast. (Could have used it for the birds series.)

It appears that Ian gets around quite a bit lately. Since he started helping with that book, his search for certain birds has intensified. All for our benefit. We get to enjoy his great photographs of some very neat species.

I trust you enjoy reading his newsletters about his birdwatching adventures as well as I enjoy them. To see all of his articles here:

Ian’s Bird of the Week

Ian’s Doves and Pigeon Photos – Columbidae Family

New Zealand Pigeon – NZ Birds Online

New Zealand Pigeon – ARKive

New Zealand Pigeon – Wikipedia

Lee's Birdwatching Adventures Plus

Birdwatching from a Christian Perspective

Category Archives: Bird of the Week

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Hall’s Babbler

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Chestnut-breasted Quail-thrush

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-breasted Buzzard

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Greater Sand Plover

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-winged Stilt

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Coal Tit

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Red-capped Parrot

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Black-fronted Tern

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Yellowhammer

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Eurasian Bullfinch

Ian’s Bird of the Week – Chestnut-breasted Mannikin/Munia

Bird of the Week – New Zealand Pigeon

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