ON THE WING
Spring was in the air as the smell of mown grass and linseed oil drifted across the Tasmanian Cricket Association ground on the Domain. Grass cut, bats oiled, the players donning whites at the oval and, in another celebration of the end of winter, welcome swallows swooping the turf.
I was not patrolling the pitch and its surroundings to look at the returning swallows, however, and their close relatives, tree martins rising and dipping above the blue gums at the TCA grounds’ fringe. I was in search of nests of striated pardalotes (pictured above), after a friend who sometimes acts as an umpire at the ground told me he had seen these cavitynesting birds build nests in unusual places — the hollow steel supports of one of the ground’s more modern shelters. A search of the roof drew a blank but I found pardalotes nesting at a more traditional site, a crack in the sandstone foundations of the ground’s historic, balconied main stand.
I say more traditional because I usually find striated pardalotes nesting in the cracks in the sandstone culverts that guide the Sandy Bay Rivulet through the Waterworks Reserve near my home.
Historically, striated pardalotes nest in tree hollows but they will take advantage of a man-made structure that suits their purpose. The same goes for their near relative, the spotted pardalote.
Because the pardalotes busy themselves in humankind’s world, bird lovers get a rare chance to view these beautiful birds at close quarters. Both are tiny, smaller than sparrows, but what they lack in size they make up for in colourful plumage which puts most of the other suburban birds in the shade.
The striated pardalote is noted for a white eye-stripe under a black cap on its head and the warm yellow hues of its plumage, especially prominent on its breast. Feathers on its back are sandy brown.
The spotted pardalote, unlike the striated pardalote, does not migrate to the mainland. It is a kaleidoscope of bright colours, with a striped head. Its breast is russet, a colour picked up on its rump and under its tail. The slate-grey back and black wings have tiny white sparkling spots, a feature that gives the bird another name, diamond bird.
The forty-spotted pardalote has an array of spots on its back and wings, the body being mainly bottle-green. The spots give this species its name but it has not been confirmed there are actually 40 of them!
Unlike the forty-spotted pardalote, both other species are common and their plaintive calls are the background sound of summer. The striated sounds as if it is saying “pick-it-up”, or “Figaro, Figaro”, as one of my correspondents once noted, and the spotted pardalote has a far-carrying two-note call to accompany the crack of leather on willow on the TCA ground.