Black, white and yellow birdy

[rattfan]

I'm trying to ID a small resident bird in my back yard, with help of my venerable A Field Guide to Australian Birds.

If someone can explain the posting of photos to Dreamwidth in clear terms to me, I will be infinitely grateful.  I did ask DW themselves but could not follow the explanation.

In any case, I haven't managed to get a picture of this bird yet and it's so quick I don't like my chances.  He lives in a largeish, bushy eucalypt and is probably either a White Cheeked Honeyeater or a New Holland Honeyeater, whose descriptions, range and habits are almost identical until you get to the tail.  The second variety has a white tip in the tail.  Right.  Spot a white tip in the usually invisible tail of an 18 cm bird that likes to stay in his home tree.  These two species are surely first cousins!

This is a street tree just over my fence directly opposite my chair on the veranda, so the bird and I have got fairly used to each other over the three months since I moved in.  I placed a bowl of water on the ground near some of my plants and I know the doves have made use of that, but don't know if the little bush birds would.  He screeched loudly at me for some days when I first appeared but has calmed down now so perhaps learned to recognise me.  The previous tenant had a dog here so this would not have been safe ground.

 

Comments

Re: howdy!

[dhampyresa]

To add context, the reason alt text is important is that it shows up in place of the image if said image is unavailable for whatever reason (for example: not loading properly, webpage being accessed with screen reader, etc).