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Black-fronted Dottorel
The Black-fronted Dotterel is widespread in many parts of Australia, where it usually inhabits the muddy margins of a variety of shallow terrestrial freshwater wetlands, walking over the soft mud, all the while pecking at its surface to take small invertebrate prey. As well as natural habitats, they also regularly occur at man-made wetlands, and are often seen at the muddy margins of farm dams. They are also often recorded in less salubrious artificial habitats, such as beside sewage treatment ponds and at sludge ponds in abattoirs.
Brown Quail
Like many species of quail, the Brown Quail is often difficult to see, as it inhabits rank, overgrown grassy areas, often in damp, low-lying patches beside wetlands. They are difficult to flush from this cover, preferring to squat among the grass or run quickly off through the vegetation rather than fly off. As is the case with many species that inhabit dense habitats, the Brown Quail may be heard more often than it is seen, with its characteristically mournful two-note call whistle often heard at dawn and dusk.
Brown Thornbill
The Brown Thornbill may lack the flamboyance of a rosella or the melodious song of a butcherbird, but for many people in eastern and south-eastern Australia, they are a familiar and friendly face in the garden or the bush alike. With a cheeky demeanour, bold attitude and frenetic buzzing calls, these diminutive birds have the ability to brighten the day of anyone nearby.
Clamorous Reed-warbler
Inhabits wetlands, especially rushes and reed beds in freshwater swamps, tall crops beside water, bamboo thickets, lantana beside water. An unobtrusive bird, living entirely within the cover of reeds. Clings to reed stems, often low down near the water pecking at insects near the waterline or foraging over fallen, floating debris and water plants for small aquatic animals.
Common Starling
The common starling has about a dozen subspecies breeding in open habitats and it has been introduced to Australia,.
Large flocks typical of this species can be beneficial to agriculture by controlling invertebrate pests; however, starlings can also be pests themselves when they feed on fruit and sprouting crops. Common starlings may also be a nuisance through the noise and mess caused by their large urban roosts.
Eurasian Skylark
Being a non-descript brown bird, the outstanding feature of the Eurasian Skylark is its well-known song. The subject of emotional outpourings by British poets for centuries, the Skylark’s song provides a pleasant background to many open grasslands, pastures and crops in south-eastern Australia. That is exactly the effect that people in the 19th century hoped to achieve when they released Skylarks into the Australian countryside by the hundred. Once considered to be the supreme songster, the songs of many native grassland birds are now generally recognised as being superior.
European Goldfinch
The European Goldfinch was introduced at numerous places in south-eastern Australia in the 19th century, and their populations quickly increased and their range expanded greatly. They now occur from Brisbane to the Eyre Peninsula. In Western Australia, the species was released in 1899, but these birds all died. Later, aviary escapees became established in parts of suburban Perth in the 1930s, and the species became common, but the population declined dramatically in the 1960s, and was extinct around Perth or nearly so by the mid-1970s.
Eurasian Greenfinch
This bird is widespread throughout Europe, north Africa and Southwest Asia. It is mainly resident, but some northernmost populations migrate further south. The greenfinch has also been introduced into Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, and Argentina. In Malta, it is considered a prestigious songbird, and it has been trapped for many years. It has been domesticated, and many Maltese people breed them. In Hungary, it is threatened.
Fairy Martin
The Fairy Martin is sometimes called the Bottle Swallow, because its nest, made from tiny pellets of mud or clay, is bottle shaped. The nests are often placed in colonies in in culverts or under bridges, and are only seldom located on natural features such as cliff faces or the banks of watercourses. The entrance to each nest is via the horizontal spout. These mud-nests are occasionally occupied by Tree Martins or Welcome Swallows, and sometimes usurped by House Sparrows and, rarely, Common Starlings.
Flame Robin
Flame Robins are winter visitors to the lowlands in south-eastern Australia. In the warmer months they breed in upland forests, laying their eggs in finely woven nests, sometimes decorated with lichen. As autumn approaches, most move to lower elevations, where they are often conspicuous in open habitats such as farmland, especially pasture and recently ploughed paddocks. They also occur in other grassy areas, such as golf courses, ovals or parkland in built-up areas. They usually return to breeding areas in the mountains in August or September.
Golden-Crested Cisticola
The diminutive Golden-headed Cisticola usually inhabits areas of long, dense grass, where they often remain hidden, but their presence may be betrayed by their buzzing and whistling calls. Once this call is heard, it is often not too difficult to see the bird perched atop a stalk of grass. During the breeding season these tiny birds can sometimes be seen performing display flights, high above the grassland, consisting of a jerking, bouncy flight accompanied by a wheezing song, before diving back down into the long grass.
Gray Butcherbird
With its lovely, lilting song, the Grey Butcherbird may not seem to be a particularly intimidating species. However, with its strong, hooked beak and its fierce stare, the Grey Butcherbird is not a bird to be messed with. When a nest or newly fledged chick is around, if you venture too close, a butcherbird will swoop by flying straight at your face, sometimes striking with enough force to draw blood, and each swoop is accompanied by a loud, maniacal cackle.
Gray Fantail
The most restless of Australia’s fantails, Grey Fantails are almost continually on the move, constantly changing position when perched, the tail swished back and forth, fluttering about in the canopy of trees or darting out after flying insects. They seem never to keep still. Despite their fluttering flight, they are nevertheless capable of relatively long-distance movements, with some regularly flying across Bass Strait. Grey Fantails’ movements are particularly complex, with no general rule: birds in each different region have their own individual patterns of movement.
Gray Shrike-thrush
The Grey Shrike-thrush is considered to be one of the best songsters in Australia. It was formerly known as the ‘Harmonious Thrush’, and little wonder, as the species has hundreds, if not thousands, of different songs, most of which are musical masterpieces. The song has been described as glorious, pleasing and melodious, with sweet, mellow, rich and liquid notes. Although their song is pleasant to human ears, it is less so for many nesting birds, as Grey Shrike-thrushes are notorious predators at nests, regularly eating eggs and nestlings.
Horsfields Bronze-cuckoo
The persistent, descending whistled call of the Horsfield’s Bronze-Cuckoo is heard throughout most of Australia. They inhabit a wide variety of lightly wooded habitats, where they often perch on a fence-post or exposed branch of a shrub, calling throughout the day and sometimes at night. Calling is most common in spring and summer, but also occurs in other seasons. Being a cuckoo, this species lays its eggs in the nests of other species, and its presence often generates irate alarm calls of potential hosts.
House Sparrow
The House Sparrow (actually a large Finch) is a native of Europe and parts of Asia, though it was widely introduced around the world. Australia was no exception, as the species was released at many sites, especially in Victoria. Sparrows quickly became established in the wild, and their numbers increased enormously until they became pests in town and country alike as they spread into new districts. However, their numbers have begun to decline in some built-up areas in recent years.
Latham’s Snipe
Even when you know exactly where they are hiding in the grass, Latham's Snipe are remarkably difficult to see. So well camouflaged, they blend into the background until, with a loud krek!, they suddenly burst from their hiding place, only to land somewhere nearby where they become instantly invisible again. They are much easier to see on their breeding grounds in Japan, thanks to their elaborate courtship displays. At the nest, though, incubating birds are superbly camouflaged, just as they are in Australia.
Little Grassbird
The Little Grassbird is a nondescript, drab little bird which lives at the margins of wetlands among rank growth of grass, rushes, reeds and sedges. In these densely vegetated habitats, the Little Grassbird is heard more often than it is seen, and its mournful, whistled three-note call is often a characteristic feature of these environments. The Little Grassbird readily engages in conversation with people — its call is easily imitated, and grassbirds usually whistle in response to such imitations.
New Holland Honeyeater
The New Holland Honeyeater is one of Australia’s most energetic birds. Fuelled up on high-energy nectar taken from the flowers of banksias, eucalypts, grevilleas and other trees and shrubs, they are always active and pugnacious. Whether they are dashing in pursuit of a flying insect or chasing other honeyeaters away, the New Holland Honeyeater is seldom seen sitting still. One of their more unusual activities is to conduct ‘Corroborrees’, where up to a dozen birds congregate and noisily display together, fluttering their wings.
Noisy Miner
Noisy Miners are particularly pugnacious honeyeaters. They noisily defend their ‘patch’ of trees from other birds, especially other species of honeyeaters which may be seen as competitors for the food resources, and these are vigorously chased away. Many other small birds are also driven from the area, and sometimes miners will even chase after cormorants or herons that may fly past, or harass them mercilessly if they perch somewhere in the miners’ territory. Because of this aggressive behaviour, areas inhabited by Noisy Miners often support few other birds.
Spotted Paradalote
One of Australia’s smallest birds, the Spotted Pardalote builds its nest in a long horizontal tunnel dug into the soil of creek banks, the embankments of railway cuttings, quarries or similar suitable sites, and sometimes they even excavate tunnels in rabbit burrows, or potted plants in gardens. The nest itself is spherical, made from strips of bark, and built in a chamber at the end of the tunnel. Pardalotes are usually seen foraging in the crowns of eucalypt trees, where they pluck invertebrates, especially psillids, from the leaves.
Superb Fairy-wren
With its gleaming, velvety blue-and-black plumage, the male Superb Fairy-wren is easily distinguished. These ‘coloured’ males are often accompanied by a band of brown ‘jenny wrens’, often assumed to be a harem of females, but a proportion of them are males which have not yet attained their breeding plumage. The contents of these birds’ untidy nests — a clutch of three or four eggs — are not necessarily the progeny of the ‘coloured’ male, as there is much infidelity among female fairy-wrens, with many eggs resulting from extra-pair liaisons.
Welcome Swallow
Australia’s most widespread swallow, the Welcome Swallow can be seen fluttering, swooping and gliding in search of flying insects in almost any habitat, between city buildings, over farmland paddocks, in deserts, wetlands, forests and grasslands and every habitat in between. Sometimes they even occur at sea — the name ‘Welcome’ swallow comes from sailors who knew that the sight of a swallow meant that land was not far away. Swallows build their mud nests in many different situations, though most noticeably beneath bridges and on the walls of buildings.
White Plumed Honeyeater
Though not a large honeyeater, the White-plumed Honeyeater is a particularly aggressive bird. They defend their territories quite fiercely, sometimes co-operating in groups to mob interlopers much larger than themselves to drive them away, and have been recorded attacking birds as large as Laughing Kookaburras and Australian Magpies, and as small as Spotted Pardalotes and Mistletoebirds. Mobbing is often accompanied by their characteristic alarm call, and White-plumed Honeyeaters are often the first birds to raise the alarm about the approach of a raptor or other potential predators.