A sticky situation for honeyeaters
OVER many years I have been used to having these lovely little black-and-white honeyeaters in my Belmont garden.
Occasionally they would build a nest here, and raise their young.
They would sometimes hold a “corroboree” when all the locals would gather in a noisy group, perhaps sorting out territorial boundaries.
Or perhaps it was just a social gathering with no particular agenda.
But for the last while — months maybe — they have been missing.
Silvereyes will occasionally sneak in for a splash in one of the birdbaths in the garden, rarely a brown thornbill.
Spotted doves, blackbirds, sometimes a wattlebird and currawongs ... ah, yes, currawongs — is this why our honeyeaters have gone?
I’m not alone in missing the New Hollands, for several emails I’ve received mention their absence from Point Lonsdale and Highton.
Pied currawongs have become increasingly an integral part of the local suburban birdlife.
Writing about the local birdlife in the early 1900s, Charles Belcher noted that they “appear in gardens (close to Lorne) every summer and autumn”.
Perc Wood, writing in the Geelong Advertiser in 1947, noted: “With much interest it has come to my knowledge of the presence in a garden in Garden St of a pair of pied currawongs.”
He went on to say “(the pied currawong) does not merit any protection, and is very good eating. The early settlers gave it the name of mutton bird.”
In my own book Birds of Geelong published in 1983, they were still rare visitors to suburban areas.
Since then, pied currawongs have become firmly established here, and it will be up to the local small birds to adapt. Wildlife information and questions can be sent to ppescott@gmail.com