Friday 29 March 2013

Friars tucking in


Now, some might think that friarbirds are ugly; I think they are magnificent. A tree full of friarbirds is like Jurassic Park in miniature. The nice bits. Well, so far...And a mob of big honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) is almost as entertaining as tree full of parrots.

I'm not sure if these are helmeted (or hornbill, if that's now a full species) or silver-crowned friarbirds, so if you have a better idea of the ID, please let me know.

Thanks to nut, who not only identified these birds as helmeted friarbirds, but also provided the diagnostic characters of helmeted and silver-crowned friarbirds. (See comments below.)







These golden pendas are no longer in flower. Yes, it's taken a while to put up this post.